Tuesday, January 10, 2012

This Just In: Everything Came From Nothing and if You Don’t Agree You Know Nothing

Evolution professor Lawrence Krauss is now saying that the universe, and everything in it, came from nothing. Not only that, but there are probably billions and billions of universes that have spontaneously arisen. Occasionally a universe happens to have all the right properties for life to arise spontaneously within it, and that would be us.

Krauss, a theoretical physicist and head of The Origins Project at Arizona State University, is not the first evolutionist to defy the age-old wisdom that something does not come from nothing. World-famous physicist Stephen Hawking popularized the idea in a recent book he co-authored entitled The Grand Design.

Krauss and Hawking use gravitational theory and quantum mechanics to argue that, in fact, such spontaneous creation is all but inevitable. Their narratives appeal to graduate-level physics which most people do not understand, but the basic idea of a strictly naturalistic creation story goes back centuries.

The intellectual necessity of naturalism

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the rise of modern science and the Enlightenment, the urge for strict naturalism was promoted by various Christian traditions. Both in England and on the continent, Christians were refining a range of theological views that required science to describe the world’s origins strictly in terms of natural law. The dozen or so views that emerged fell into two broad categories. One category dealt with the divine attributes while the other dealt with epistemology and man’s knowledge. For short, we may refer to them as the “greater god mandate” and the “intellectual necessity” for naturalism.

In each category a foundational theological view supported various specific arguments for naturalism. One argument from the intellectual necessity view, which became more clear in the eighteenth century, was that special divine action (or primary causation) interfered with scientific progress, or even made science impossible.

As Baden Powell had insisted, all of science depends on the principles of uniformitarianism. Darwin’s confidant J. D. Hooker was more direct. Though he found special creation and evolution at an empirical standoff, neither theory with a clear advantage, he opted for the latter for its “great organizing potential.” It was not that evolutionary theories were “the truest,” he wrote to William H. Harvey in 1859, “but because they do give you room to reason and reflect at present, and hopes for the future, whereas the old stick-in-the-mud doctrines … are all used up. They are so many stops to further inquiry; if they are admitted as truths, why there is an end of the whole matter, and it is no use hoping ever to get any rational explanation of origin or dispersion of species—so I hate them.”

A law-like origins of the world, on the other hand, supported the accrual of knowledge. Darwin enunciated this view when he explained that acceptance of his theory of evolution was less important than the rejection of special divine action:

Whether the naturalist believes in the views given by Lamarck, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, by the author of the ‘Vestiges,’ by Mr. Wallace or by myself, signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species, and have not been created immutable: for he who admits this as a great truth has a wide field open to him for further inquiry.

The rejection of special divine action was equated with scientific progress. Here Darwin extrapolated his metaphysical argument to arrive at the ultimate proof against creation. His main point, that no creator ever would have intended for this world, was now protected against counter arguments because such counter arguments would be unscientific.

Darwin repeatedly used metaphysical arguments against creation to prop up evolution, but now he declared that counter arguments would be out-of-bounds since they were unscientific. Darwin correctly observed that creation and its supporting arguments hinge on one’s concept of God, but he conveniently forgot that arguments against creation equally hinge on one’s concept of God. For Darwin, it was fair game to argue against creation but not for it. Thus, evolution was the correct scientific conclusion. In fact, what good science required was a naturalistic explanation, regardless of what particular explanation was used.

Since Darwin this theological argument has gained strength. For Niles Eldredge, the key responsibility of science—to predict—becomes impossible when a capricious Creator is entertained:

But the Creator obviously could have fashioned each species in any way imaginable. There is no basis for us to make predictions about what we should find when we study animals and plants if we accept the basic creationist position. … the creator could have fashioned each organ system or physiological process (such as digestion) in whatever fashion the Creator pleased.

In his text Paul Moody explains that without strict naturalism one does not have an explanation at all:

it amounts to saying, ‘Things are this way because they are this way.’ Furthermore, it removes the subject from scientific inquiry. One can do no more than speculate as to why the Creator chose to follow one pattern in creating diverse animals rather than to use differing patterns.

Likewise Tim Berra warns that we must not be led astray by the apparent design in biological systems, for it “is not the sudden brainstorm of a creator, but an expression of the operation of impersonal natural laws, of water seeking its level. An appeal to a supernatural explanation is unscientific and unnecessary—and certain to stifle intellectual curiosity and leave important questions unasked and unanswered. ” In fact, “Creationism has no explanatory powers, no application for future investigation, no way to advance knowledge, no way to lead to new discoveries. As far as science is concerned, creationism is a sterile concept.”

Lawrence Krauss and the intellectual necessity

And so it is not surprising to hear Lawrence Krauss, at the 3:14 mark in the above lecture, rehearse the same, centuries-old, intellectual necessity theology in support of his conviction that something, in fact the entire universe, just happened to spontaneously arise from nothing:

I am going to a talk about our modern picture of cosmology and how it has changed our view of the universe—the past and the future, and in some sense how that picture is clearly remarkable. And far more remarkable than the fairly tales that are made up in most religious situations.

But the key point is mystery. That is one of the things that makes science so special I think. It is that scientists love mysteries. They love not knowing. That’s a key part of science. The excitement of learning about the universe. And that again is so different than the sterile aspect of religion where the excitement is apparently knowing everything, although clearly knowing nothing.

There you have it. Without naturalism there is not only no excitement, there is no knowledge. We are left “apparently knowing everything” but “clearly knowing nothing.” Given this truth, then of course, we must have evolution.

Everything came from nothing and if you don’t agree, then you know nothing. Religion drives science, and it matters.

168 comments:

Not to be pedantic, Pedant, but Krauss is not just an evolutionist, but in the words of Cornelius, he's an "evolution professor". It appears that in Cornelius' world, if you're an evolutionist and a professor - in whatever field of study - then you are automatically an evolution professor.

I actually quite enjoyed the OP - mostly, I think, because Cornelius spent much of the time quoting others who were talking complete sense.

A law-like origins of the world, on the other hand, supported the accrual of knowledge.

Yes, that is quite right. A naturalistic worldview allows the acquisition of scientific knowledge, while a worldview which allows for the supernatural does not. I am genuinely impressed that you recognise this point at all, though its deeper implications obviously haven't quite hit home yet.

Here Darwin extrapolated his metaphysical argument to arrive at the ultimate proof against creation.

No. No-one was trying to disprove creation. The point was already made - to perform science we must assume a naturalistic world.

And this point did not begin with Darwin, so I don't know why you are trying to attribute it to him.

His main point, that no creator ever would have intended for this world...

No, that was NOT his point. His point was that we have to ASSUME a naturalistic world in order to scientifically investigate it. You just quoted him saying exactly that. How can you so totally misunderstand a passage you yourself have quoted?

There you have it. Without naturalism there is not only no excitement, there is no knowledge. We are left “apparently knowing everything” but “clearly knowing nothing.”

You sound offended. Like he has insulted you. You have indeed given his words a twist - that isn't QUITE what he's saying, but the root point is there, and you haven't at all refuted it. The increase in knowledge of our world is only possible by assuming naturalism. That is perfectly true. You have done nothing to show otherwise.

Given this truth, then of course, we must have evolution.

Non-sequitur. This is a physicist talking about the origin of the universe. Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with this.

How exactly do these 'great' physicists explain where these laws (quantum mechanics and gravity) were before the universe existed? Correct me if I'm wrong but are not physical laws simply a way to describe the way the universe operates, so if there is no universe, logically there are no laws so how can they have any part in the creation of the universe of which they are a part?

How exactly do these 'great' physicists explain where these laws (quantum mechanics and gravity) were before the universe existed?

Well for one thing, we cannot be certain that the concept of 'before the Big Bang' makes any sense at all. Some theories postulate that time itself (at least as we know it) came into being with the Big Bang, so there was no 'before' it. Asking what existed before the beginning of time is like asking what is north of the north pole.

Others merely assert the laws of physics are merely brute facts. The whole concept of asking where they 'came from' is a bizarre one. Laws of physics are not crafted, they are not activated - they are simply a way of describing how physical objects interact.

"God didn't need a Creator. He is not bound by the rules of the universe or the limits of our minds. He has always been and always will be. That's truth and not a 'fairy tale'"

Fifi the pink unicorn didn't need a Creator. She is not bound by the rules of the universe or the limits of our minds. She has always been and always will be. That's truth and not a fairy tale. Praise Fifi.

God didn't need a Creator. He is not bound by the rules of the universe or the limits of our minds. He has always been and always will be. That's truth and not a 'fairy tale'

The most sensible conclusion! Arguing nothing comes from something is ludicrous since it never happens. Time was created with the universe, so anything outside the universe is not in our time, so outside our rules of cause and effect. An infinite number of universes is not an answer either. Where did they come from, some infinite universe creating process without intelligence? Sound ridiculous to me.

Ian, why did you bother to post on this blog? Don't you have a life outside this blog?

Wow, that was quite rude and unnecessary, wasn't it, Neal? Especially from someone who is a regular poster here too...

Peter -

The most sensible conclusion!

Not really. No more sensible than 'A magic unicorn did it'.

Time was created with the universe, so anything outside the universe is not in our time...

In which case there was no 'before' the Big Bang. There was never a time when the universe did not exist, from which it suddenly came into being.

Sound ridiculous to me.

Argument from incredulity. What you find ridiculous is besides the point. What matters is evidence.

It's no wonder most people reject atheism, it is just to implausible.

Oh, the irony of someone claiming atheism to be implausible when they are advocating the least plausible proposition there is - a being who is infinite in every way. There literally cannot be a less likely, and therefore less plausible, being.

An excuse to be an atheist? Why on Earth would anyone need an excuse to not believe in something? Do you have an excuse to not believe in unicorns or Santa?

Ritchie, Hawks said you are illiterate. “It(science) just makes it possible to not believe in God.”By the way do you know how stupid you sound when you say that you can’t tell the difference between not believing in God from not believing in unicorns? I know it might play well with you idiotic atheist friends but it just shows that you are completely ignorant to the depth of the subject. It makes you sound even more stupid than someone who says that Homo sapiens evolved from chimpanzees.

"By the way do you know how stupid you sound when you say that you can’t tell the difference between not believing in God from not believing in unicorns? I know it might play well with you idiotic atheist friends but it just shows that you are completely ignorant to the depth of the subject. It makes you sound even more stupid than someone who says that Homo sapiens evolved from chimpanzees."

There's no more evidence for your chosen imaginary god than there is for unicorns. Both have no evidence.

The "depth of the subject"? You've got to be joking. Religious beliefs are as shallow as anything can be. They're just made up nonsense.

I see that you brought up the arrogant and mistaken 'I ain't no filthy ape!' boast. Actually, you and all other humans have a long ancestry that includes not only apes but a whole bunch of other critters.

do you know how stupid you sound when you say that you can’t tell the difference between not believing in God from not believing in unicorns?

They are both beliefs in totally unevidenced mythological beings. The only pertinent difference is that a lot of people really do take the idea of God seriously. But that doesn't make it any more likely to be true.

I know it might play well with you idiotic atheist friends but it just shows that you are completely ignorant to the depth of the subject.

The evidence we see in science that points to the origin of the Universe, the fine tuning of the Universe, the extreme complexity of life, etc. are all confirmatory of the truth claims made in scripture. Some even say that the scriptures have other scientific truths in them which are also confirmed by science (for example, time had a beginning, the Universe is expanding, etc).

But I agree with you that someone could take this scientific evidence and argue that another god created the Universe (or an advanced alien race for that matter).

In testing the truth claims of Christianity it is helpful to look at evidence in other spheres. For example, the evidence of the resurrection, historical evidence, archaeological evidence, sociological evidence, prophetic evidence etc. Quite frankly, it is possible to prove that Christianity is true from any of these other spheres all by themselves.

As one tiny example of evidence that corroborates the truth claims of Christianity, look up the Pilate Stone.

I think you are greatly mistaken. I don't think you can build even a probable case for Christianity in any of the above fields. The archaeological evidence flatly contradicts many critical Biblical events, while the evidence for Jesus much better fits the pattern of a mythical figure. The Pilate Stone, for example, can support only that there was a Roman goveneror called Pontius Pilate. That is really precious little to go on.

And which archaeological evidence is that? You just kind of made a bald assertion without providing any evidence to back it up.

I'm aware that there have been broad assumptions in the past that certain Biblical stories weren't true because archeological evidence hadn't been found yet to support the Biblical narrative. In fact, atheistic scholars denied that Pontius Pilate existed for a long time (before the Pilate stone was found).

Usually it goes something like this. Atheist scholar X denies that Biblical story Y is accurate because no archaeological has been found to corroborate the biblical story. Then we find archeological evidence. Atheist X then wipes the egg off his face and stops claiming that Biblical story Y is inaccurate and moves on to criticize Biblical story Z.

while the evidence for Jesus much better fits the pattern of a mythical figure.

Now I know that you either really have no idea what you are talking about, or have such an anti-Christian bias that you are completely unwilling to be persuaded by very strong evidence. No serious scholar of New Testament history denies the historical existence of Jesus.

In fact, Bart Ehrman, who is NO friend of Christianity and has written several books trying to discredit it, plainly agrees that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure who existed. Observe this discussion on youtube where he appears on an atheistic radio program:

1) As Thornton says, Noah's Flood.2) No evidence for Jewish captivity within Egypt. In fact, as it turns out, Such work as building pyramids and raising monuments was done gladly by Egyptians themselves out of national pride, not the result of oppressed slave labour.3) The exodus. The idea that Egypt could suffer such a chain of disasters and remain on its feet is laughable, and yet all dating of the exodus puts it during the very height of Egypt's empirical power.4) There was certainly no Blitzkrieg lightening military campaign against the nations of Canaan, as supposedly led by Joshua.

Usually it goes something like this. Atheist scholar X denies that Biblical story Y is accurate because no archaeological has been found to corroborate the biblical story. Then we find archeological evidence. Atheist X then wipes the egg off his face and stops claiming that Biblical story Y is inaccurate and moves on to criticize Biblical story Z.

No, what usually happens is that Christian scholar A finds evidence which supports Biblical fact B, and concludes that therefore facts C-Z are all true too.

No-one ever claimed the Bible is TOTAL fiction. Its stories are myth and legend. This means it is indeed bound to include real people and places. But as for some of its more outlandish claims - such as the flood, exodus of Campaign of Joshua, those events ARE flatly contradicted by archaeology.

Now I know that you either really have no idea what you are talking about, or have such an anti-Christian bias that you are completely unwilling to be persuaded by very strong evidence.

Wrong on both accounts. There IS no strong evidence. There is not one single historical document (and I am excluding the gospels here) which supports the idea of an historical Jesus which was written by anyone who was alive during Jesus' lifetime. This alone is enormously suspicious. All we have are a slow trickle of exceedingly weak references dating, at the earliest, decades after Jesus' alleged death. This is not strong evidence. This is very, very poor evidence.

Yes we have the gospels, but these have their own problems. They are anonymous, don't even claim to be written by eye-witnesses, and the synoptic problem proves they are not independent accounts.

In fact, Bart Ehrman, who is NO friend of Christianity and has written several books trying to discredit it, plainly agrees that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure who existed.

No, he agrees Jesus MIGHT have been real. And on the basis of what evidence? All we really have is a heap of Pauline mythology, and people trying to decide whether it was more likely that this mythology stands on its own, or was projected onto a real (and undoubtedly entirely human) person.

Either way, Christianity rests upon the MYTHOLOGY being real. It is not enough that Jesus might have been a real, entirely human, person. Christianity absolutely necessitates the most outlandish, most magical, and therefore most unlikely, claims about him being true.

Archaeology flatly contradicts the global Noah's Flood story for one. There are well documented Neolithic sites like Jiahu, China in areas that show continuous habitation going back over 9000 years.

There are similar continuously occupied neolithic sites in the Middle East, like Catal Hoyuk in Turkey.

Apparently people in China and Turkey lived right through the Flood without even noticing.

Thorton,

The archeological evidence you cited would only contradict the flood account if you wanted to insist that the great flood must have happened within the past 7000 years and/or that that those structures were inhabited at the time of the flood.

It is possible that those structures were built and then were later abandoned during the time of the flood. Or it is possible that the human race is much older than 7000 years and the great flood happened tens of thousands of years ago. Hebrew scholars like Kenneth Kitchen believe that the human race is much older than 7000 years and the biblical geneologies only record the notable human beings after Adam.

Furthermore, there is OVERWHELMING evidence of a worldwide flood that had devastating consequences on the human race. How do we know this? We can look at flood legends around the world, including in civilizations which had no exposure to Judeo-Christian theology and compare their flood legends with the flood account written in the scriptures.

For example, in Hawaiian mythology there wsa a man named Nu'u who built an ark with which he escaped a Great Flood. He landed his vessel on top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island. Nu'u mistakenly attributed his safety to the moon, and made sacrifices to it. Kane, the creator god, descended to earth on a rainbow, explained Nu'u's mistake. Missionaries to Hawaii in the 19th century considered him analogous to Noah of the Bible.

In Chinese mythology there is a deity called "Nuwa" who went up to Heaven and stopped a great flood. Chinese mythology also claims that Nuwa created the world in seven days. BTW, the Chinese also have characters in their alphabet that have an eerie similarity to stories in Genesis:

Chaldean legends have a person named "Noa" lived with his three sons "Sem" "Japet" and "Chem" and their wives, and foresaw a great flood and built an ark. All of humanity was wiped out except for Noa and his family and their boat landed on a great mountain.

I could list these all day long but I think you get the idea. What are the odds that all of these disparate cultures and civilizations around the world, most of home had no contact whatsoever with Judeo-Christian theology, would come up with strikingly similar stories of a worldwide event by random chance?

Insteaed it is far more likely that something happened in the ancient history of humanity that matches what is recorded in the bible.

The archeological evidence you cited would only contradict the flood account if you wanted to insist that the great flood must have happened within the past 7000 years and/or that that those structures were inhabited at the time of the flood.

It is possible that those structures were built and then were later abandoned during the time of the flood.

No, it is not possible. Both the archeological and geologic evidence show those areas have never been under water, let alone a raging global Flood.

Or it is possible that the human race is much older than 7000 years and the great flood happened tens of thousands of years ago.

Humans are much older than 7K years. Modern humans arose approx. 100K years ago. There is no evidence of any kind in any time frame that indicates a global covering Flood that killed all life except for what was on a wooden boat.

For example, there are geologic formations like the Chief Mountain overthrust that would be impossible to form without hundreds of millions of years of plate tectonics and erosion. It is impossible to form in a one time Flood.

There is evidence from other sciences too. If all life was reduce to 2 or 7 pairs (or 4 for humans) only tens of thousands of years ago, then we'd see evidence of a severe genetic bottleneck in all species. But we don't.

Furthermore, there is OVERWHELMING evidence of a worldwide flood that had devastating consequences on the human race. How do we know this? We can look at flood legends around the world, including in civilizations which had no exposure to Judeo-Christian theology and compare their flood legends with the flood account written in the scriptures.

There are flood legends from many cultures because most human cultures developed in flood prone areas - coastal plains of flat river valleys. Maybe you can explain why we have so many significantly different flood stories when they all supposedly came from the same eight people on the Ark?

Then there's the physical and temporal distribution of the fossil record. I like the way the clams and deciduous trees outran the velociraptors to higher ground, so that's why those fossils are always found in younger, topmost strata.

The topic of a literal Noah's Flood is not worthy of a scientific discussion. Even 5 year old children can understand the evidence that the Earth was totally destroyed and almost all life killed only tens of thousands of years ago.

This is completely untrue. There is plenty of archeological evidence that corroborates the Biblical narrative of the Israelites and Egyptians.

One notable example is the Merneptah Stele which records the Egyptian king Merneptah boasting that he laid waste to Canaanite nations, including Israel. The Egyptian word he uses for "Israel" implies that there was no king of Israel at the time, which would put his accomplishments during the time of the judges. The discovery of this stele forced scholars to concede that the ancient Israelites lived in Canaan much earlier than they had previously been stating.

http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a015.html

Here is a good site which discusses much of the evidence for the Biblical narrative regarding Israel and Egypt:

http://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/exodus.htm

It is very important that you don't fall into the trap of assuming that absence of evidence means evidence of absence. That is the same mistake that atheistic scholars have made time after time (such as with Pontius Pilate) only to end up with egg on their face.

4) There was certainly no Blitzkrieg lightening military campaign against the nations of Canaan, as supposedly led by Joshua.

Are you familiar with the archeological research on the city of Jericho? A British archeologist examined the site in the 1950s and found that the city had been destroyed following an unusual earthquake which allowed one small portion of the wall to remain standing while everyone else the wall fell. The city was then completely destroyed by fire. All of this matches the Biblical narrative perfectly.

Did you even listen to the Youtube link I posted? He said that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than for any other 1st century person! He was unequivocal. If your not willing to accept a man's own words about what he believes then either a) you didn't listen to the link I posted, or b) you are so strongly emotionally attached to the idea of Jesus being a mythical figure that you must have put your fingers in your ears and sang "la la la" while Bart Ehrman was talking!

There is no evidence of any kind in any time frame that indicates a global covering Flood that killed all life except for what was on a wooden boat

Nevertheless, its entire possible that a cataclysmic flood occurred which wiped out most of humanity (which is what I personally believe).

For example, its possible that the most of humanity was in a particular region of the world. Let's say a large comet struck the Indian Ocean, and caused massive floods all over Asia, Africa, and Middle East. The flood would have been worldwide in the sense that most of humanity was wiped out but would not necessarily have destroyed all life on Earth. Before this happened, God warned Noah to build an ark in order to survive and stock it with lots of animals and seed so that he would have plenty of food to re-establish civilization and reseed life in that part of the Earth.

There are flood legends from many cultures because most human cultures developed in flood prone areas

These aren't just random flood stories. They bear striking similarity to one another, including in the general narrative, the number of people who survived, the warning from a higher power, even in the names. It's not plausible that all of these similarities occured by happenstance.

If all life was reduce to 2 or 7 pairs (or 4 for humans) only tens of thousands of years ago, then we'd see evidence of a severe genetic bottleneck in all species.

We have plenty of evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the human race, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The evidence shows that Y-chromosomal Adam lived much later than Mitochondrial Eve. This corroborates the flood story perfectly. Really Y-chromosomal Adam should be called Y-chromosomal Noah!

For example, its possible that the most of humanity was in a particular region of the world. Let's say a large comet struck the Indian Ocean, and caused massive floods all over Asia, Africa, and Middle East.

So now you're saying the Biblical version of the fountains of the deep is wrong, and that the Flood wasn't global. Interesting. There's also zero evidence that humanity was clustered only in that region, and tons of evidence humans were all over the globe. There's also zero evidence of a large asteroid impact in that any time in the last hundred million years.

You really are just making this up as you go along, aren't you?

We have plenty of evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the human race, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The evidence shows that Y-chromosomal Adam lived much later than Mitochondrial Eve. This corroborates the flood story perfectly. Really Y-chromosomal Adam should be called Y-chromosomal Noah!

Of ferchrissake. Mitochondrial Eve was merely the woman who is maternally related to everyone alive today. She wasn't the only woman alive at the time. Just like Y-chromosomal Adam was a common male ancestor to us all, not the only man alive in his time.

It's amazing how many Creationists bollix up this particular example in their desperate attempts to prop up a belief in a literal Bible.

So now you're saying the Biblical version of the fountains of the deep is wrong, and that the Flood wasn't global.

I don't believe that the Bible is incorrect in any way. I offered a possible hypothesis of how it could have happened, and a particular interpretation of Genesis that many Christians believe. The flood was universal in the sense that it wiped out most of humanity, but not necessarily a global flood in the sense that a giant ocean covered the entire Earth. This particular interpreation is put forward by people like Hugh Ross at RTB. (In other words, I'm not making stuff up as we go along, but I suspect that you are).

There's also zero evidence that humanity was clustered only in that region, and tons of evidence humans were all over the globe. There's also zero evidence of a large asteroid impact in that any time in the last hundred million years.

Now you're just making bald assertions in your never ending effort to be contradictory. There is also little or no physical evidence of the Tunguska event, but we know definitively that it happened a hundred years ago.

What is crystal clear is that:

1) Extremely diverse cultures all over the globe have very similar flood legends of a God or the gods warning a man (whose name often begins with an "N' and sounds alot like Noah) to build a big boat and populate it with animals in order to survive a coming flood. You've never given me a good answer for this very strange phenomena.

2) Genetic evidence of a human population bottleneck, with the common ancestor of all females living much earlier than the common ancestor of all males. You can offer an alternative explanation if you like, but that doesn't invalidate my explanation.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I find all this far more believable than a Universe popping into existence uncaused out of nothing and some slime self-organizing into a living organism and then mutating into a human being. Someone would have to be a fool to believe in that!

Offer me some evidence of the slime becoming alive and then I'll start to take you more seriously!

The flood was universal in the sense that it wiped out most of humanity, but not necessarily a global flood in the sense that a giant ocean covered the entire Earth

You are directly contradicting yourself. The Bible says the Flood covered the entire Earth. If you say it didn't, then that means you are saying the Bible is incorrect.

Make up your mind.

Now you're just making bald assertions in your never ending effort to be contradictory. There is also little or no physical evidence of the Tunguska event, but we know definitively that it happened a hundred years ago.

There is still a whole flattened forest in Tunguska. The Shiva crater in the Indian Ocean is estimated to be approx. 65MYA, roughly the same time frame as Chicxulub. There is also considerable archeological evidence for human habitation in Siberia going back some 45,000 years, and in the Americans over 20,000 years. Like most Creationists, your 'knowledge' of the basic facts is simply wrong.

1) Extremely diverse cultures all over the globe have very similar flood legends of a God or the gods warning a man (whose name often begins with an "N' and sounds alot like Noah) to build a big boat and populate it with animals in order to survive a coming flood. You've never given me a good answer for this very strange phenomena

Some cultures have Flood stories, but not all. Many of the Flood stories also significantly differ in their details - when it happened, who was involved, how they were saved. No one who has studied them think they all refer to the same event. You're really grasping at the thinnest straws.

2) Genetic evidence of a human population bottleneck, with the common ancestor of all females living much earlier than the common ancestor of all males. You can offer an alternative explanation if you like, but that doesn't invalidate my explanation.

Mitochondrial Eve is NOT evidence of a genetic bottleneck. Not even close.

Your misunderstanding of the actual science and what the results mean is just abysmal.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but I find all this far more believable than a Universe popping into existence uncaused out of nothing and some slime self-organizing into a living organism and then mutating into a human being.

What you personally choose to believe has no bearing on scientific reality.

Humans need fresh water to live. And many ancient cultures lived on rivers and in coastal areas. Is it really a big surprise that many cultures have myths surrounding flooding?

The flood was universal in the sense that it wiped out most of humanity, but not necessarily a global flood in the sense that a giant ocean covered the entire Earth.

That is what the Bible claims. The Bible is accurate or it is not.

One notable example is the Merneptah Stele which records the Egyptian king Merneptah boasting that he laid waste to Canaanite nations, including Israel.

This stele lists Israel as one of four nations defeated/destroyed. It says nothing about enslaving the entire nation, which, if that is what they did, is an enormously curious omission. If fact there is no mention at all in ancient Egyptian records of a cohesive foreign ethnic group enslaved WITHIN Egypt.

Here is a good site which discusses much of the evidence for the Biblical narrative regarding Israel and Egypt

I only took a cursory glance (I'm a tad busy atm) but nothing jumped out at me as terribly conclusive there either. Just mentions about other groups such as the Hyksos and Apiru which are assumed to have something to do with the Israelites. Is there something specific which you think is pretty decisive?

It is very important that you don't fall into the trap of assuming that absence of evidence means evidence of absence

While that is true, you are falling into the very opposite trap and assuming that everything which hasn't yet been confirmed by archaeology will be, not matter how vastly unlikely that looks.

Are you familiar with the archeological research on the city of Jericho? A British archeologist examined the site in the 1950s and found that the city had been destroyed following an unusual earthquake which allowed one small portion of the wall to remain standing while everyone else the wall fell.

While there is indeed a wall that shows sign of destruction by earthquake (though why you call such activity unusual, I do not know), but it is in the wrong period - the Middle Bronze Age rather than the Late Bronze Age. Bryant Wood stands with very, very few archaeology who insists the dates are wrong and the wall must have fallen in the Late Bronze Age - to fit the Bible's dates. There are significant problems with this - notably it ignores there was also a Late Bronze Age settlement (though with no walls). Additionally, the Carbon dating methods he used to date what he calls City IV are now known to be in error. The British Museum issued a correction for the dates, which puts it back in the Middle Brnoze Age again (Bowman, S.G.E., Ambers, J.C., and Leese, M.N. "Re-Evaluation of British Museum Radiocarbon Dates Issued between 1980 and 1984." Radiocarbon vol.32, no.1, 1990, p. 59-79.).

Added to which, there is no sign of the sudden fall of surrounding sites (Ai, Gibeon, Beeroth, Lachish, Gezer, Hebron, Jarmuth, and Hazor) at this, or any synchronated time.

Okay, on that you caught me out. No I didn't. But having listened to it I am still unimpressed. To this 'evidence' he refers, I can only assume he means the documents which contain mentions of Jesus's mythology. Surely he thinks we can use the gospels as sources to somehow catch a glimpse of the real Jesus beneath the layers of myth? By why should we trust them as sources at all? They are, after all, obviously religiously-motivated, contradictory and interdependent. Besides, their accuracy is what we are trying to establish.

I cannot think what else he can possibly be referring to as 'evidence'. He certainly does not say what that might be. He did mention Paul, but Paul makes no claim to having seen the living Jesus. He is not a first-hand witness.

By the way, in contrast, we DO have a lot of first-hand evidence for Julius Caesar - coins and coins struck in his image, documents written by people who actually met him, letters written by his own hand, exactly the sort of things Jesus is conspicuously without.

You are directly contradicting yourself. The Bible says the Flood covered the entire Earth. If you say it didn't, then that means you are saying the Bible is incorrect.

I am not contradicting myself. The Bible often uses the term "whole earth" as a way to refer to all humankind (for example in Genesis 6:12). Here is a very good article why someone can make the case from the Bible that the flood must have been a local flood:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

There is still a whole flattened forest in Tunguska.

Of course there is, because it's only been a hundred years. 5,000, 10,000, 25,000 years from now there won't be a flattened forest there anymore. There will be a brand new forest with no trace of the forest ever having been flattened. Not to mention, this object would have exploded over an ocean leaving no physical traces whatsoever (not even a flattened forest).

Some cultures have Flood stories, but not all. Many of the Flood stories also significantly differ in their details - when it happened, who was involved, how they were saved. No one who has studied them think they all refer to the same event. You're really grasping at the thinnest straws.

I'm not grasping at straws. Many of these stories have extremely similar elements, including similar names, narrative, number of people, all humanity being wiped out, arks being built with animals on it (sometimes in the face of extreme skepticism and ridicule), etc.

As Stephen D. Peet wrote,

... there are many descriptions of the remarkable event [the Genesis Flood]. Some of these have come from Greek historians, some from the Babylonian records; others from the cuneiform tablets, and still others from the mythology and traditions of different nations, so that we may say that no event has occurred either in ancient or modern times about which there is better evidence or more numerous records, than this very one which is so beautifully but briefly described in the sacred Scriptures. It is one of the events which seems to be familiar to the most distant nations—in Australia, in India, in China, in Scandinavia, and in the various parts of America. It is true that many look upon the story as it is repeated in these distant regions, as either referring to local floods, or as the result of contact with civilized people, who have brought it from historic countries, and yet the similarity of the story is such as to make even this explanation unsatisfactory.

Here is a pretty good website which outlines many of the flood legends:

http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html

Mitochondrial Eve is NOT evidence of a genetic bottleneck. Not even close.

I didn't say that Mitochondrial Eve was evidence of a genetic bottleneck. But we do have evidence that a genetic bottleneck occurred in human history. Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam ("Noah") merely corroborate the flood account in Genesis.

What you personally choose to believe has no bearing on scientific reality.

Neither do your personal beliefs have bearing on scientific reality. Science tells us that life can only come from life and that things can't happen without a cause. Your religious beliefs prevent you from accepting these basic facts and believing in all sorts of wild fairy tales without any scientific evidence whatsoever!

LOL! Yes you are, big time, with every post. If the Flood was local as you are now claiming then not everyone else on the planet and not all the animals were killed. The Bible says they were, except those on Noah's Ark. So the Bible is wrong.

T: "There is still a whole flattened forest in Tunguska."

Of course there is, because it's only been a hundred years."

But above you said there was "little or no physical evidence of the Tunguska event". You're contradicting yourself again.

T: "Mitochondrial Eve is NOT evidence of a genetic bottleneck. Not even close."

I didn't say that Mitochondrial Eve was evidence of a genetic bottleneck.

YES YOU DID. Here are your exact words from above

wgbutler777Jan 13, 2012 06:59 AM:

"We have plenty of evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the human race, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam."

You can't even keep your cockamamie story straight post to post, let alone day to day.

Is there any scientific field you're *not* completely ignorant of we can discuss?

LOL! Yes you are, big time, with every post. If the Flood was local as you are now claiming then not everyone else on the planet and not all the animals were killed.

I think its pretty clear what I was saying. The flood was geographically local but universal in the sense that all of the humans except for Noah and his family were wiped out. I don't think all the animals were wiped out, just the animals in the region of the world where the humans existed.

The scriptures often use the phrase "the whole earth" in a way that means everything in a wide area. For example, in Genesis 41 the scriptures say that:

And the famine was over all the face of the earth: and Joseph opened all the storehouses, and sold unto the Egyptians; and the famine waxed sore in the land of Egypt.

Clearly the famine was limited to the regions of the middle east and Africa, but again, this is how the ancient Hebrews used idiomatic language.

In much the same way the flood waters could have affected everything on the side of the planet that Noah was on, and since it is likely that Noah lived tens of thousands of years ago (certainly before the Chinese civilization started since we have Chinese legends that are clearly inspired by Genesis) it is very feasible that all of humanity lived on that side of the planet at the time of the flood.

I don't know how much more clearly I can state this. Feel free to disagree with me if you want to but there isn't any scientific evidence you can come up with that would disprove this hypothesis.

But above you said there was "little or no physical evidence of the Tunguska event". You're contradicting yourself again.

And here's yet another example of you being immature, which is why you are quickly on your way to being ignored. When I said there was "little or no physical evidence" I was clearly talking about giant craters or things that a meteor would leave behind which would last for thousands of years. Of course there is a flattened forest, etc.

Please don't waste any more of my time with these kinds of remarks. I know you're not this stupid.

YES YOU DID. Here are your exact words from above

"We have plenty of evidence for a genetic bottleneck in the human race, Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam."

And here is an example of you reading my remarks in the least charitable way. Of course I don't think that Mitochondrial Eve is evidence of a population bottleneck at least in terms of the great flood, since I believe that Mitochondrial Eve is the REAL Eve mentioned in first chapters of Genesis and Y-Chromosomal Adam (i.e. Noah) wouldn't have lived until thousands of years later.

When I originally brought this up my point was that Y-Chromosomal Adam (Noah) lived much later than Mitochondrial Eve, so several thousand years after the maternal ancestor of humanity we experienced a population bottleneck where we had a common male ancestor (Noah).

Is there any scientific field you're *not* completely ignorant of we can discuss?

Fair warning - I've responded to this last message but I'm not going to waste any more time paying attention to your inane ramblings unless the quality of your posts starts to improve (or at least the quality of your arguments). You are clearly here solely to cajole and antogonize and it's pretty clear that you are not interested in any kind of meaningful discussion of the issues.

Humans need fresh water to live. And many ancient cultures lived on rivers and in coastal areas. Is it really a big surprise that many cultures have myths surrounding flooding?

I've gone over this ad nauseum with Thorton. These are not simply a collection of diverse stories with random elements and a flood event. Many of these stories are eerily similar to one another. For example, the Chinese have a legend that goes:

The Chinese classic called the Hihking tells about "the family of Fuhi," that was saved from a great flood. This ancient story tells that the entire land was flooded; the mountains and everything, however one family survived in a boat. The Chinese consider this man the father of their civilization. This record indicates that Fuhi, his wife, three sons, and three daughters were the only people that escaped the great flood. It is claimed, that he and his family were the only people alive on earth, and repopulated the world.

The Aztecs have a similar legend:

Aztec- A man named Tapi lived a long time ago. Tapi was a very pious man. The creator told Tapi to build a boat that he would live in. He was told that he should take his wife, a pair of every animal that was alive into this boat. Naturally everyone thought he was crazy. Then the rain started and the flood came. The men and animals tried to climb the mountains but the mountains became flooded as well. Finally the rain ended. Tapi decided that the water had dried up when he let a dove loose that did not return.

(both of these are from: http://www.nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html )

I could copy and paste these all day long but I think you get the point. These are not just random flood stories, they have a common thread and indicate that all of these diverse cultures had a common background and a common historical experience.

first-hand evidence for Julius Caesar - coins and coins struck in his image, documents written by people who actually met him, letters written by his own hand, exactly the sort of things Jesus is conspicuously without.

Quite honestly Ritchie, if you want to insist that Jesus Christ was a mythological figure, there really is no point in us having a discussion.

That is a bizarre position that is way outside the mainstream of historical research that no credible scholar supports. Even respected scholars who detest Christianity and spend their lives trying to discredit it like Bart Ehrman concede that Jesus Christ was a real historical figure.

Your stance indicates that your opinions are greatly colored by a huge anti-Christian bias to the point of making you incapable of any type of meaningful dialogue. It's basically like trying to have a historical discussion about world war 2 with a holocaust denier.

If you're not willing to even concede this, then there really isn't any point in me wasting time discussing anything else with you.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope that I am) but the whole "Jesus was a mythological figure" position really kind of exposes you as an extreme atheist who is not only hugely ignorant but even worse, willfully blind.

These are not simply a collection of diverse stories with random elements and a flood event. Many of these stories are eerily similar to one another.

Or are you just picking flood stories which are particularly similar to each other?

Besides, exactly what kind of connection are you suggesting existed between the Israelites and the ancient Atzecs?

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope that I am) but the whole "Jesus was a mythological figure" position really kind of exposes you as an extreme atheist who is not only hugely ignorant but even worse, willfully blind.

I would certainly hope none of that is the case. I hope I am always willing to at least consider contrary evidence when presented. But that is not what you are giving me.

You told me there is a lot of very strong evidence for a historical Jesus. That's quite a claim since, to my knowledge, it is completely false. Now that may just be my ignorance, and if it is, then I would genuinely appreciate being corrected on the matter.

But all you are doing is insisting that this amazingly strong evidence really does exist, telling me how many people (and even the great Bart Ehrman) have been swayed by it, and that I am ridiculous for not believing it. This is no way to change my mind. To do that, all you need to do is tell me what this ample and compelling evidence IS.

Besides, exactly what kind of connection are you suggesting existed between the Israelites and the ancient Atzecs?

They would each have descended from Noah and his three sons. When they branched off, they would have taken their common history with them which would explain the similarity in their flood legends.

This is no way to change my mind. To do that, all you need to do is tell me what this ample and compelling evidence IS.

OK, but keep in mind that I am not a historian so there are others out there who could probably give you better arguments. Here is some of the evidence for the historical Jesus.

1) The gospel accounts.2) The Pauline epistles.3) The writings of Josephus, specifically the Antiquities of the Jews where he mentions Jesus personally and also mentions James "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ". The James reference is widely regarded by a majority of scholars as being authentic.4) The creeds of the early church.5) The writing of Tacitus about a great persecution of Christians by Nero in the early 100s. He wrote:

Nero fastened the guilt [of starting the blaze] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius [14-37] at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and the most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

6)The writings of Pliny the Younger concerning how to deal with Christians and force them to deconvert.

7) The fast spread of Christianity, despite widespread persecution and every incentive in the world to not become a Christian.8) The writings of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.9) Jewish records, for example Rabbi Akiba wrote One the eve of the Passover, Yeshu was hanged. Forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried: "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover10) The Acts of the Apostles, widely regarded as being very historically accurate and validated by many archeological findings.11) The reference to the works of Thallus by Julius Africanus, who is apparently describing the supernatural events that took place during the crucifixion:

On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in his third book of History, calls (as appears to me without reason) an eclipse of the sun

I'm going to stop here, but there's a ton more that is just a google search away.

The position that Jesus was a mythological figure is a fringe position that the vast majority of historians reject. These are people who dedicate their entire lives to studying this stuff. And many of them are highly motivated to find inconsistencies or flaws in the Christian narrative.

What kind of evidence would it take to convince you? Keep in mind that for the first 3 or 4 centuries this was an illegal religion and its adherents were widely persecuted and often put to death. Do you really expect to find coins with Christ's picture from the first century?

I should have also mentioned Lucian. A Greek Satirist who lived in the second century. He apparently made a living by mocking Christians. Think of him as sort of an ancient Bill Maher. He wrote:

The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day — the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account… You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws.

I think its pretty clear what I was saying. The flood was geographically local but universal in the sense that all of the humans except for Noah and his family were wiped out. I don't think all the animals were wiped out, just the animals in the region of the world where the humans existed.

That's not what the Bible says:

Genesis 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

So once again you're directly contradicting the Bible. BTW, if the Flood was local and God knew he wasn't killing all the animals, then why did Noah have to gather mating pairs of every kind to take on the Ark?

That's the problem when you make up this crap on the fly - you talk yourself into a corner with every layer of nonsense you add.

In much the same way the flood waters could have affected everything on the side of the planet that Noah was on, and since it is likely that Noah lived tens of thousands of years ago (certainly before the Chinese civilization started since we have Chinese legends that are clearly inspired by Genesis) it is very feasible that all of humanity lived on that side of the planet at the time of the flood.

Completely unsupported assertion contradicted by all the available archaeological evidence.

And here's yet another example of you being immature, which is why you are quickly on your way to being ignored. When I said there was "little or no physical evidence" I was clearly talking about giant craters or things that a meteor would leave behind which would last for thousands of years. Of course there is a flattened forest, etc.

LOL! So now it's *my* fault for not reading your mind and instead listened to what you wrote, not what you meant. You Creationists are too funny sometimes!

And here is an example of you reading my remarks in the least charitable way. Of course I don't think that Mitochondrial Eve is evidence of a population bottleneck at least in terms of the great flood, since I believe that Mitochondrial Eve is the REAL Eve mentioned in first chapters of Genesis and Y-Chromosomal Adam (i.e. Noah) wouldn't have lived until thousands of years later.

I'll only say this once more. The evidence indicates that there existed at one time a woman who is related maternally through her descendents to all humans alive today. IT DOESN'T INDICATE SHE WAS THE ONLY WOMAN ALIVE AT THAT TIME.

If you're too stupid or too lazy to read the reference I provided or research it yourself you can pound sand.

When I originally brought this up my point was that Y-Chromosomal Adam (Noah) lived much later than Mitochondrial Eve, so several thousand years after the maternal ancestor of humanity we experienced a population bottleneck where we had a common male ancestor (Noah).

THAT'S NOT WHAT THE GENETIC EVIDENCE FOR Y-CHROMOSOME ADAM SHOWS. It has nothing to do with a bottleneck, only a common male ancestor. Damn but you're a dense one.

You grabbed hold of a few scientific terms you heard in the popular press and have ZERO understanding of what they mean or represent. You then spun ignorance and misunderstanding into a complete fantasy narrative that has ZERO scientific support and ZERO connection to reality.

You are clearly here solely to cajole and antogonize and it's pretty clear that you are not interested in any kind of meaningful discussion of the issues.

Frankly, you've shown me you're far too ignorant to have any sort of meaningful scientific discussion on any topic concerning evolutionary biology. You come in here spouting the most inane nonsense then get ticked when someone demonstrated just how stupid your claims are. Tough luck buddy. If you want sycophantic agreement stick to your censored Creationist boards like UD.

They would each have descended from Noah and his three sons. When they branched off, they would have taken their common history with them which would explain the similarity in their flood legends.

We do have a fairly comprehensive picture of how humans colonised the world from genetic and archaeological evidence, and it shows the native Americans arrived in the continent rought 25,000 years ago, from Asia. The idea of the Middle East being a point of origin for the spread of humanity is indeed contradicted by the evidence. Unless you are suggesting Noah actally lived in sub-Saharan East Africa 85,000 years ago...?

OK, but keep in mind that I am not a historian so there are others out there who could probably give you better arguments.

Granted, though I've never seen anyone come up with anything more compelling than what you have, in fact, presented...

1) The gospel accounts.

We have several problems here. For one thing, they are anonymous and don't even claim to be first-hand, eyewitness accounts. They were attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, centuries later. And if they (or any of the disciples) really were the authors, then why do they talk about the disciples in the third person?

Moreover, there is the synoptic problem. The degree of parallel shows at least 3, (and probably the fourth too) of the gospels are interdependent. These are not independent accounts which happen to agree - they were written using each other as source material:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels

There is also the point that we don't know exactly when they were written. Though we have earlier references to writing of the apostles, the latest-possible date set for the gospels is 180 AD, from a mention by Irenaeus, who is the first to give a reliable mention of the canon gospels by name and describe them in a way we would recognise them, though it doesn't say how much earlier they were written. This is a surprisingly late date.

Finally, since it is the gospels which we are trying to verify, we cannot really use them as authoratative sources of evidence for themselves.

2) The Pauline epistles.

Paul doesn't even claim to have met Jesus himself. By his own account, he only saw a vision of Jesus after he had been executed. He was not an eye-witness to Jesus, and can only, at best, be giving us second-hand information.

But besides that, there is the startling fact that Paul's epistles actually say rather little about the details of Jesus' life which we can corroborate. He does not add details to the gospel account which help us verify it. What we have, basically, are the letters of a self-confessed preacher preaching his faith, who never met the man he is preaching about. There's little here which can act as an objective historical account.

3) The writings of Josephus, specifically the Antiquities of the Jews where he mentions Jesus personally and also mentions James "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ". The James reference is widely regarded by a majority of scholars as being authentic.

Yes, Josephus always gets mentioned because his alleged references are the earliest non-Biblical references. And this is an important point. He was born 37 AD, and wrote the passages in question in Antiquites around 90-96. And yet, his is the EARLIEST non-Biblical historical reference we have for a real Jesus. How can that be? How can it be that no-one who saw Jesus and his miracles through his life wrote anything down about him?

Be that as it may, it is reasonably likely that both mentions of Jesus by Josephus were later Christian interlopations. Contrary to your claim, it is far from a consensus among scholars. Wiki is pretty thorough on the debate on the authenticity of these passages:

I don't see how this could stand as reliable, historical evidence. The problem here is impertiality. Creeds are statements of belief. How could they possibly be used as historical evidence?

5) The writing of Tacitus about a great persecution of Christians by Nero in the early 100s.

Again, it was written nearly a century after Jesus's alleged crucifixion (around 115 AD). So it is pertinent to ask where Tacitus is getting his information from. The idea that he is using Roman records is highly unlikely, since there is no evidence they kept records of every crucifixion in every backwater province of the Empire. The answer is most likely a contemporary Christian source. What reason would he have had to doubt the version he gave in the passage you cited?

6)The writings of Pliny the Younger concerning how to deal with Christians and force them to deconvert.

Mentions nothing about a real Jesus. Only the existence of Christians. I am not denying they existed...

7) The fast spread of Christianity, despite widespread persecution and every incentive in the world to not become a Christian.

Is no evidence at all. It is perfectly possible for believe to believe a lie. A claim is not made made true by the number of people who believe it nor the speed with which is spreads.

8) The writings of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.

Makes only one reference to Jews in Rome causing trouble at the instigation of a man called 'Chrestus'. Can be taken as a misspelling of 'Christus', but was actually a Roman name in its own right. How that can be taken for corroborative evidence I don't know. Why does he say 'Jews' and not 'Christians' when he plainly knows the difference? And why imagine this 'Chrestus' was a misspelt 'Christus'?

Another reference says Christians were punished following the fires in Rome. But again, this says nothing at all about a historical Jesus.

9) Jewish records, for example Rabbi Akiba wrote:

The Jewish Talmud contradicts the Christian version of events in several places. This passage says he was hanged, not crucified. Others say he was stoned. Some say he died at Lydda, and not by Romans, but by the Jews. Smoe say he was the son of a Roman soldier, others that h lived in what we must reckon to be 100 BC, or even later.

Added to which, this is not an objective historical record, but a religious polemic (and one written in about 200 AD at that). It is no more reliable simply because it is Jewish rather than Christian.

10) The Acts of the Apostles, widely regarded as being very historically accurate and validated by many archeological findings.

Suffers the same problems as the gospel accounts.

11) The reference to the works of Thallus by Julius Africanus,

In the ninth century, a Christian scholar called George Syncellus quoted a third-century Christian named Julius Africanus, who in turn referenced a man assumed to be Thallus, who allagedly wrote a history of Eastern Mediterranean sometime between 50 and 100 AD. This is the only reason we know anything at all about Thallus, and none of Africanus' works survive either.

So we actually have a fragment of third-hand hearsay stretching eith centuries. Do you need me to point out why this is considered incredibly weak historical evidence?

I'm going to stop here, but there's a ton more that is just a google search away.

You seem to have covered most of the most popular bases.

And let me take a moment to say this list is far from impressive. The Bible-books are the only works even allegedly written by anyone who was alive during Jesus' lifetime. We have reason to doubt the authenticity or reliability, or both, of every single reference you have presented. And even if they were all totally reliable, that still wouldn't add up to a very impressive list of evidence for the most remarkable 'man' who ever lived.

What kind of evidence would it take to convince you?

Good historical evidence is first-hand, independant, objective, eye-witness testimony from people writing without bias on the topic. Obviously this is hardly ever achieved, but the further a piece of evidence strays from this standard, the less reliable we should consider it.

"Exactly...that's why He's GOD. He is eternal and outside time and space, thus the laws of physics do not apply to Him. Only God could be the first cause because He is UNcaused."

You god zombies are hilarious.

I know for a fact that Fifi the pink unicorn created everything there is everywhere. Fifi is eternal and outside time and space, thus the laws of physics do not apply to Her. Only Fifi could be the first cause because She is UNcaused. I'm saying it so it must be true. Praise Fifi.

Look, everything had to have a beginning, right? Therefore God didn't have to have a beginning. There is nothing that is truly infinite, right? Therefore God is infinite. Everything had to have a cause, right? Therefore God didn't have a cause. It's as simple as that.

Religious "logic" really comes down to finding a paradox of some sort (e.g. the infinite regress of who created the creator) and simply defining "God" as the resolution to that paradox. Nevermind, of course, that such definitions relate in no way to the God of the Bible (or the Quran, or the Bhagavad-Gita, etc...).

defining "God" as the resolution to that paradox. Nevermind, of course, that such definitions relate in no way to the God of the Bible

Except that it does:

Isaiah 43:10"You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me..."

John 1:1-3"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made..."

The evidence we see in science that points to the origin of the Universe, the fine tuning of the Universe, the extreme complexity of life, etc. are all confirmatory of the truth claims made in scripture.

LOL! Hardly. But you're not the first deluded Creationist to make that claim, and you won't be the last.

But I agree with you that someone could take this scientific evidence and argue that another god created the Universe (or an advanced alien race for that matter).

You've just contradicted your first claim.

In testing the truth claims of Christianity it is helpful to look at evidence in other spheres. For example, the evidence of the resurrection, historical evidence, archaeological evidence, sociological evidence, prophetic evidence etc. Quite frankly, it is possible to prove that Christianity is true from any of these other spheres all by themselves.

What a silly assertion. Being correct or historically accurate in one area doesn't make a book true in all areas. New York City and the Empire State Building are real historical places, but that doesn't make the story of King Kong true.

I'm not really sure what to say. You're just kind of ranting and trying to find any excuse to hurl insults and act superior.

If you have some actual evidence to present I'm be interested in seeing it. Otherwise, don't bother wasting your keystrokes because I'm not impressed by you and I don't care what your opinion of me is.

I'm not really sure what to say. You're just kind of ranting and trying to find any excuse to hurl insults and act superior.

I'm not ranting, hurling insults, or acting superior. I just highlighted the fact that you made a really dumb claim in saying that all the Bible is true because parts of it are true. You *could* have fashioned a reply that actually addressed the important point I raised, but you didn't. I can only assume you have no answer.

As far as all of the Bible being true - how about Genesis 30:39, where we're told you can get goats to produce striped offspring merely by having them mate in front of a striped tree branch. Did the Bible get that one correct?

Or how about Ezekiel 26:29, the Biblical prophesy that the city of Tyre would be destroyed down to the rock and never rebuilt? The 120,000 people who still live there now would be very surprised to know their city doesn't exist. Did the Bible get that one correct?

You seem to be just one more Creationist blindly parroting back the part line without the slightest bit of research or understanding. Sadly, you guys are far too common.

Quite frankly, it is possible to prove that Christianity is true from any of these other spheres all by themselves.

Quite true. Notice the many lies Krauss relies on to support his point of view:

He says that he does not know it all, but is certain religious people are wrong. How can he know this.

In the science that is warped by his religious beliefs:

The universe came from quantum fluctuations. How does he know that? There is no know mechanism for creating universes. We have quantum fluctuations and universes are not exploding within our universe so quantum fluctuations do not create universes.

The net energy of the universe is zero therefore the universe created itself. What separated the positive and negative energy in such a fine tuned way as to create universe?

Multiverses exist without proof.

String theory is his salvation although it is highly subjective.

Intelligence was created randomly from nothing.

Krauss is an intelligent scientist, but he should leave the theologizing to people with more wisdom in that area.

Whether the universe had a 'beginning' or not or was deliberately 'caused' or not, the imaginary god you've chosen to believe in had nothing to do with it. Even IF there is or was a being/entity of some sort that created this universe, it neither is nor was your chosen imaginary god.

What you religious wackos don't realize is that your god can only be as valid as the stories and evidence that are associated with it, and since there is NO evidence, all you have are the fairy tale stories.

Those stories are absolutely ridiculous and full of contradictions. No one in their right mind would believe them. And not only are they ridiculous and contradictory, but they are small. IF there were actually a 'creator' of the universe, it would be something FAR beyond what your puny mind, and your puny antiquated religion, could ever imagine.

The stories in the bible and in the dogma of other religions are just a bunch of childish yarns thought up by small minded, superstitious, uneducated, ignorant, fearful, and/or controlling people. It's not too surprising that people who lived long ago would have thought up goofy stuff like that but there's no good excuse for anyone to fall for and promote that baloney these days.

Of course you can believe whatever you want, but you do not have the right to sneak or force your crazy beliefs into public schools, politics and public policy, the lives of other people, and/or science.

You need take a deep breath man. You're getting quite agitated there! Why don't you leave your parents basement for a few days. Get some fresh air or some sun.

That's not what the Bible says:

Genesis 6:7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

Your interpretation of this scripture makes no sense theologically. Why would God regret making the animals? Were they sinning too? And if God regretted making the animals why would He go through such painstaking efforts to preserve them on the ark?

God caused the flood to wipe out the humans, and this passage indicates that the method of destruction (a great flood) would also involve wiping out the wildlife during the process as well.

if the Flood was local and God knew he wasn't killing all the animals, then why did Noah have to gather mating pairs of every kind to take on the Ark?

Noah only had to take animals such as were necessary to repopulate that region of the Earth and to sustain Noah and his family for food/livestock/farming purposes. This is pretty clear in the text where Noah takes 7 pairs of some kinds of animals and only 1 pair of other kinds of animals.

The Ark wouldn't have been big enough to carry one pair of every kind of species on Earth. Nor would it have been necessary since only one region of the Earth would have been affected.

Completely unsupported assertion contradicted by all the available archaeological evidence.

Interestingly enough, here is an article on ARCHEOLOGY.COM which discusses this hypothesis as well as taking note of the great similarity of flood legends scattered all over the world:

...There Was a Great Flood....the stories of the great flood give even more cause for thought. In South America it is the most commonly reported worldwide catastrophe. Masse found it in 171 myths among groups scattered from Tierra del Fuego in the south to the far northwest part of the continent. It is consistently the earliest disaster, always reported prior to the world fire, falling sky and darkness. In the vast majority of cases only a single great flood is described, which Masse thinks makes it unlikely that it represents recollection of local or regional flooding. And South America isn't the only place it occurs.

Of course, the biblical story of Noah's flood is well known, as is the related Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh and the flood...

http://archaeology.about.com/od/climatechange/a/masse_king_3.htm

Here is a big list of Flood stories from all over the globe. I invite those interested to read them for themselves.

I've never claimed that every single flood story in the world is related to the historical occurrance of the great flood. Only that a subset of these stories have a striking similarity to one another that points to a common historical event that impacted diverse human cultures all over the world.

Your interpretation of this scripture makes no sense theologically. Why would God regret making the animals? Were they sinning too? And if God regretted making the animals why would He go through such painstaking efforts to preserve them on the ark?

You tell me. It's your Bible that says that, not me. The Bible that you claim is 100% correct.

Noah only had to take animals such as were necessary to repopulate that region of the Earth and to sustain Noah and his family for food/livestock/farming purposes. This is pretty clear in the text where Noah takes 7 pairs of some kinds of animals and only 1 pair of other kinds of animals.

That's not what the Bible says either. I didn't realize in your branch of Christianity you got to write your own holy book.

Keep making it up as you go. Watching you contradict yourself with every post is highly entertaining.

Interestingly enough, here is an article on ARCHEOLOGY.COM which discusses this hypothesis as well as taking note of the great similarity of flood legends scattered all over the world:

The article is hypothesizing about several different Holocene comet impacts being the source for Flood legends. Nothing about one giant impact, and nothing about all humans on the planet being killed except for one family. Your own source directly contradicts you. Nice own goal.

I've never claimed that every single flood story in the world is related to the historical occurrance of the great flood. Only that a subset of these stories have a striking similarity to one another that points to a common historical event that impacted diverse human cultures all over the world.

LOL! Time for the Creationist 100 meter backpedal as the stupidity of your claims gets exposed.

LOL! So now it's *my* fault for not reading your mind and instead listened to what you wrote, not what you meant. You Creationists are too funny sometimes!

No I think this is a pretty clear example of your real motivations. You are not interested in any serious discussion of the issues. You are simply a garden variety atheist troll whose sole purpose to is insult and harass and try to get attention. Frankly it is a complete waste of time to communicate with you but I have done this because

1) This is HIGHLY entertaining to me!2) I wanted to show everyone else on this message board how facile and ignorant your arguments really are. There is no absolutely no need for believers to be intimidated in any way by people like you.

I'll only say this once more. The evidence indicates that there existed at one time a woman who is related maternally through her descendents to all humans alive today. IT DOESN'T INDICATE SHE WAS THE ONLY WOMAN ALIVE AT THAT TIME.

THAT'S NOT WHAT THE GENETIC EVIDENCE FOR Y-CHROMOSOME ADAM SHOWS. It has nothing to do with a bottleneck, only a common male ancestor. Damn but you're a dense one.

LOL, you really are quite a character!

The scientific evidence from Mitochondrial Eve tells us that we all have a common female ancestor who lived a long time ago. And the scientific evidence for Y-Chromosomal Adam (Noah) tells us that we also all have a common MALE ancestor who lived thousands of years after Mitochondrial Eve died. This is perfectly consistent with the Biblical story of the Great flood.

You can insist that there was no bottleneck. This evidence doesn't say that. We know from other scientific studies like these:

No I think this is a pretty clear example of your real motivations. You are not interested in any serious discussion of the issues.

It's impossible have a serious discussion with someone so ignorant of genetics and paleontology and geology and archaeology as you are. You make stuff as you go based on a few buzzterms you picked up with ZERO understanding. It's like trying to discuss tensor calculus with a gerbil.

The scientific evidence from Mitochondrial Eve tells us that we all have a common female ancestor who lived a long time ago. And the scientific evidence for Y-Chromosomal Adam (Noah) tells us that we also all have a common MALE ancestor who lived thousands of years after Mitochondrial Eve died. This is perfectly consistent with the Biblical story of the Great flood.

See, that's exactly what I mean. You're been corrected on this incredibly stupid mistake at least twice, that the genetic data doesn't show only ONE person alive at the time, only one that we're all distantly maternally related to. It is impossible to get the genetic diversity we find in humans now from just ONE person, or even the four pairs on the Ark in the time frame you propose.

You won't read the references provided, you won't research on your own. You just keep blindly repeating the same bit of Creationist stupidity.

It's also good to note that *if* the human population was down to just 4 women on the Ark, then one of those would have to be "Mitochondrial Eve" by the definition of M.E.

And yes, there is some evidence (disputed) of a human genetic bottleneck at Toba around 70K years ago, but the genetics show the population was reduced to around 5000 +/- breeding pairs. Not the 4 pairs your fantasy claims.

Once again, the scientific evidence puts the lie to your goofy stories.

Go ahead and make up some more crap though if it makes you happy. I'll be glad to point out the contradictions and flat out stupid errors for you.

God caused the flood to wipe out the humans, and this passage indicates that the method of destruction (a great flood) would also involve wiping out the wildlife during the process as well.

So your interpretation of the story of Noah's ark is that humans only populated a small corner of the planet, and that God sent a local flood necessary only for killing all the humans? Am I right so far?

What branch of Christianity would recognise that interpretation of the story as their own?

The scientific evidence from Mitochondrial Eve tells us that we all have a common female ancestor who lived a long time ago. And the scientific evidence for Y-Chromosomal Adam (Noah) tells us that we also all have a common MALE ancestor who lived thousands of years after Mitochondrial Eve died. This is perfectly consistent with the Biblical story of the Great flood.

Except for one thing: why wouldn't Mitochondrial Eve live at the same time as Noah too?

The Bible says Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives were on the ark. And if we are all descended from only one such man, why aren't we descended from only one such woman from the same time too? Mitochondrial Eve predates Y Chromosome Adam by thousands of years...

that there HAVE been major bottlenecks in human history!

I don't believe Thornton is denying this. I think he is saying that Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosome Adam coincide with any human genetic bottlenecks. And that is true.

Nothing about Mitochondrial Eve or Y Chromosome Adam suggests they were the ONLY woman/man of their time, or one of a low number. There could have been millions of people alive during their respective times (I'm not saying there was, just that there could have been). Nothing about them, on the face of it, implies a small population/gene pool.

I haven't forgotten about you. I'm extremely busy taking care of a one year old and making the the time to post these messages is an extremely challenging task.

So your interpretation of the story of Noah's ark is that humans only populated a small corner of the planet, and that God sent a local flood necessary only for killing all the humans? Am I right so far?

I wouldn't say that the humans of the time inhabited "one small corner" of the planet. They were probably widely dispearsed over a large geographical area, probably Europe, Asia, and Africa.

What branch of Christianity would recognise that interpretation of the story as their own?

Well I don't know of any DENOMINATION that has this interpretation as their official doctrine, but there lots of Christians who believe this theory. Just do a google search for "Local Flood Noah" and you'll see several links where Christians (usually scientifically minded Christians) promote this theory. The idea can be found as early as the 17th century from theologians like Edward Stillingfleet.

Here is an apologetics website which argues for a local flood:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html

Except for one thing: why wouldn't Mitochondrial Eve live at the same time as Noah too?

The Bible says Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth and their wives were on the ark. And if we are all descended from only one such man, why aren't we descended from only one such woman from the same time too? Mitochondrial Eve predates Y Chromosome Adam by thousands of years...

This is exactly the point I am trying to make. The reason my Mitochondrial Eve does not come from the time of Noah is because Noah's wife and the wives of his three sons were all unrelated to one another. Therefore the common female ancestor would have preceded all of them. However, Noah was the most recent common male ancestor the other three males came directly from him. This fits the genetic evidence perfectly.

I don't believe Thornton is denying this. I think he is saying that Mitochondrial Eve and Y Chromosome Adam coincide with any human genetic bottlenecks. And that is true.

It is not true. It took me 30 seconds to find this, and this isn't even my area of expertise:

Many studies report that Y-chromosomal Adam lived as early as around 142,000 years ago [1] and possibly as recently as 60,000 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

The Toba supereruption (Youngest Toba Tuff or simply YTT[1]) was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred some time between 69,000 and 77,000 years

It is not true. It took me 30 seconds to find this, and this isn't even my area of expertise:

Many studies report that Y-chromosomal Adam lived as early as around 142,000 years ago [1] and possibly as recently as 60,000 years ago

Hey WGButler, since you're using Wiki as your reference, why did you leave out this part?

"Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the Biblical Adam. This may lead to a misconception that he was the only living male of his times, even though he co-existed with plenty of men around, including his own father who was not the "most recent". However, all his other male contemporaries failed to produce a direct unbroken male line to the present day."

I haven't forgotten about you. I'm extremely busy taking care of a one year old and making the the time to post these messages is an extremely challenging task.

Hey, no worries. No rush. I know how long these posts sometimes take. I myself am just bored at work, atm...

I wouldn't say that the humans of the time inhabited "one small corner" of the planet. They were probably widely dispearsed over a large geographical area, probably Europe, Asia, and Africa.

In which case a 'local' flood would be insufficient to kill them all, surely?

This is exactly the point I am trying to make. The reason my Mitochondrial Eve does not come from the time of Noah is because Noah's wife and the wives of his three sons were all unrelated to one another. Therefore the common female ancestor would have preceded all of them. However, Noah was the most recent common male ancestor the other three males came directly from him. This fits the genetic evidence perfectly.

I see your logic, but I still wouldn't call it a perfect fit.

For one thing, a population of four breeding females would still represent an extraordinarily tight bottleneck, and we do not see that come up in the genetic history of homo sapiens. Bottlenecks do occur, here and there, but the most significant one we can trace is the pioneers who left Africa around 85,000 years ago, which suggests they numbered little more than a hundred.

The Toba catastrophe, for example, sent the human population plummeting down to a mere 15,000 individuals. A crash of a mere 4 breeding pairs would stand out like a sore thumb.

It is not true. It took me 30 seconds to find this, and this isn't even my area of expertise:

What you have found dates the Toba catastrophe (a bottleneck which is accounted for by the Toba volcano, btw) at around 69-77 thousand years ago, while Y Chromosome Adam lived roughly 60 thousand years ago. I'm not getting your point here...

Thanks for taking the time to snipe at me man! I haven't had this much fun with an internet atheist in a long time!

Hey WGButler, since you're using Wiki as your reference, why did you leave out this part?

"Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the Biblical Adam. This may lead to a misconception that he was the only living male of his times, even though he co-existed with plenty of men around, including his own father who was not the "most recent". However, all his other male contemporaries failed to produce a direct unbroken male line to the present day."

Y-chromosomal Adam

Cherry-picking snippets of data while ignoring the parts that directly contradict you isn't very honest.

Is there a reason I should have included this? I did post the link after all, and anyone is invited to read the whole article for themselves. But since you seem to think I"m being dishonest lets dissect your full quote.

Y-chromosomal Adam is named after the Biblical Adam. This may lead to a misconception that he was the only living male of his times, even though he co-existed with plenty of men around

First of all, as I have consistently stated, Y-chromosomal Adam should have been called Y-chromosomal Noah. And yes I agree that he co-existed with plenty of men around at the time. Unfortunately for them, they were all wiped out in the flood (except for his three sons).

However, all his other male contemporaries failed to produce a direct unbroken male line to the present day

Y-chromosomal Adam was not the most recent common paternal ancestor. All present-day Y chromosomes are descendant from his Y chromosome. This is not true for the rest of the genome.

As I pointed out below (I hate this threaded system), there is a much more recent common ancestral male to all present-day humans, a mere few thousand years ago. This is an ancestor in the genealogical sense. He is the most recent male of which all humans alive today are descendants. That is not to say that any of our genes can be traced back to that individuals. The genes have been mixed in the complex network of pedigrees leading up to today.

I still haven't forgotten about you. But I'll steal a quick minute to answer your questions.

if mitochondrial eve was Eve, then how do we have humans who predate her?

Homo spaiens = appeared around 200,000 years ago.Mitochondrial Eve = around 120,000 years ago.

From:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived around 200,000 years ago,[2] most likely in East Africa,[

And

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195,000 years ago, and studies of molecular biology give evidence that the approximate time of divergence from the common ancestor of all modern human populations was 200,000 years ago.

Thanks for taking the time to snipe at me man! I haven't had this much fun with an internet atheist in a long time

No problems. Couple of things though - first off, I'm not an atheist, I'm an agnostic. There's a big difference. Second, I haven't been sniping at you or your religion. You're the guy who came in here with the ignorance based and frankly ridiculous claims. The guy with no understanding of even the most basic things about genetics or geology or archaeology. Why are you getting all torqued off when you get called on the stupidity?

Now you have two choices. You can accept that you were wrong, learn from the mistakes, and alter your position accordingly. Or you can keep being a willfully ignorant doofus and keep making the same boners. Choice is yours. We can have some nice, interesting discussions about all sorts of scientific things. But first you have to lose the attitude.

ETA: This double nested new format sucks baby poo through a twisty straw. Deep six it please.

"This concept of a single woman as the maternal ancestor of everyone alive today has caused much confusion, not only among the public but also among some biologists who ought to know better. Yet the concept is relatively straightforward: given that there was a single origin of life on this planet that all living things today are derived from, then it has to be the case that all of the variation in any DNA sequence, not just mtDNA, must trace back to a single ancestor at some point in the past. The fact that in the case of mtDNA the ancestor was a woman follows from the maternal inheritance of mtDNA.

However, mitochondrial Eve differs from the biblical Eve in one important aspect: she was not the only woman alive on the planet at the time that she lived; instead, she was a member of a population that included many other women, but they did not contribute mtDNA types to the people living today. If one could follow the descendants of all women who lived at the same time as mitochondrial Eve, generation after generation, sooner or later all of the female descendants of each woman would either have no offspring or only male offspring, resulting in the extinction of that mtDNA lineage"

There is another problem with Mitochondrial Eve: she is the ancestor every present-day person's mitochondrial DNA - not our nuclear DNA. That's because mtDNA does not recombine, unlike nDNA. Most nuclear genes probably have a unique most recent common ancestor (MRCA), and for different nuclear genes they may have lived many thousands of years apart.

Having said that, there was a woman who was the most recent female ancestor to all present-day people, and she lived much later than Mitochondrial Eve. In this paper it is estimated that she lived around 3500 years ago. She is not Mitochondrial Eve because she probably had female descendants who didn't have daughters and hence didn't pass on their mitochondrial DNA.

If a common ancestor of all living humans is defined as an individual who is a genealogical ancestor of all present-day people, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for a randomly mating population would have lived in the very recent past1, 2, 3. However, the random mating model ignores essential aspects of population substructure, such as the tendency of individuals to choose mates from the same social group, and the relative isolation of geographically separated groups. Here we show that recent common ancestors also emerge from two models incorporating substantial population substructure. One model, designed for simplicity and theoretical insight, yields explicit mathematical results through a probabilistic analysis. A more elaborate second model, designed to capture historical population dynamics in a more realistic way, is analysed computationally through Monte Carlo simulations. These analyses suggest that the genealogies of all living humans overlap in remarkable ways in the recent past. In particular, the MRCA of all present-day humans lived just a few thousand years ago in these models. Moreover, among all individuals living more than just a few thousand years earlier than the MRCA, each present-day human has exactly the same set of genealogical ancestors.

Here is my reply to your comments regarding the evidence for the historical Jesus.

I've never seen anyone come up with anything more compelling than what you have, in fact, presented...

Thank you for the kind remark.

Moreover, there is the synoptic problem. The degree of parallel shows at least 3, (and probably the fourth too) of the gospels are interdependent.

This isn't really my area of expertise. From my understanding there was an earlier source called "Q" or something like that which is the basis for some of the gospels.

At any rate, I'm not aware of any scholarship, even liberal humanistic scholarship, even people like Bart Ehrman, that claims that the gospels are a complete fabrication. Many of these liberal scholars try to discredit portions of the gospels, but no one is saying that its just a big hoax. Usually they go the other way and try to claim that some gnostic gospel that has no real evidence behind it should also be descriptive of Jesus life, where he had a relationship with Mary Magdalene or had sex with a goat, or something like that.

Your unwillingness to accept the scholarship, even by very liberal scholars who are extremely hostile to Christianity, is reminiscent of young earth creationists who insist that the Earth is 6,000 years old against all scientific evidence. Both of these points of view are highly motivated by strong religious beliefs and display an unwillingness to accept basic scientific data at face value because it conflicts with internal worldviews.

By his own account, he only saw a vision of Jesus after he had been executed. He was not an eye-witness to Jesus, and can only, at best, be giving us second-hand information.

Nevertheless he interacted with people who would have been alive at the time of Jesus.

Give me an alternative hypothesis. That these people were a radical sect of Jews who conspired with one another to fabricate a gigantic hoax and invent an imaginary person who would have been executed by the Roman authorities in a very public and humiliating way on one of the main Jewish holy days? Do you realize how easy this would have been to discredit?

And that they willingly did this despite being publicly ridiculed, living lives of poverty and in many cases being beaten and executed?

Furthermore, you are setting an impossibly high standard that would make it impossible to believe that any ancient figure ever existed. We have more historical evidence for Jesus Christ than we do for Alexander the Great.

Do you also doubt that he existed? Do you realize that no one wrote anything about Alexander the Great until he had been dead for 300 to 500 years, and then there only a few sources. Absolutely nothing that compares with the historical evidence we have for Jesus.

You want to immediately dismiss anything written or said by a Christian. You also want things written by non-believers on Christ despite the fact that no one would have been talking about Him until Christianity had been well established. You also expect things in stone and granite from a religion that was illegal to practice upon pain of death for the first 300-400 years of its existence.

Be that as it may, it is reasonably likely that both mentions of Jesus by Josephus were later Christian interlopations. Contrary to your claim, it is far from a consensus among scholars. Wiki is pretty thorough on the debate on the authenticity of these passages:

From wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

In the second, brief mention, Josephus calls James "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ."[78] The great majority of scholars consider this shorter reference to Jesus to be substantially authentic...

Creeds are statements of belief. How could they possibly be used as historical evidence?

These creeds were widespread through the church and indicated an early narrative that was well known. Again, you are being extremely unreasonable and setting an impossibly high standard.

Again, it was written nearly a century after Jesus's alleged crucifixion (around 115 AD). So it is pertinent to ask where Tacitus is getting his information from. The idea that he is using Roman records is highly unlikely, since there is no evidence they kept records of every crucifixion in every backwater province of the Empire. The answer is most likely a contemporary Christian source. What reason would he have had to doubt the version he gave in the passage you cited?

The writings of Tacitus are extremely helpful historically for several reasons.

1) It is clear that he personally was hostile to Christianity.2) He was a man of relatively great importance in the Roman Empire3) He was a historian4) He shed light on what was happening to the Christians in the Roman Empire of his day (they were accused of setting Rome on fire and were being tortured and executed by Nero).

All this is very helpful information because it corroborates what we know about early church history.

Again, what is your alternative hypothesis?

Look, its getting late and I'm fairly tired. Suffice it to say that people who spend their lives studying this stuff come to very different conclusions than you. I find the evidence very plausible and can't think of any other alternative that would explain all the data. To say that your position is the radical fringe would be doing it a great kindness.

And I have to ask. Since you are hyper skeptical about the existence of even the historical Jesus, what are you doing here? Why is this a subject you are so interested in? I'm just curious.

And I have to reiterate what I said yesterday. If you are not even willing to consider that a historical Jesus really existed there isn't much use in us talking about anything else. I do appreciate your courtesy and politeness, however. It is a refreshing change from the usual hostility one encounters when talking with skeptics on the Internet.

There are also scholars who believe there MIGHT have been a man at the centre of the Pauline myths, but the stories are so dense and tangled that we will never know, like Paul R. Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd.

Nevertheless he interacted with people who would have been alive at the time of Jesus.

Did he? Does he ever even claim to? Or is this something else you are just assuming?

Give me an alternative hypothesis. That these people were a radical sect of Jews who conspired with one another to fabricate a gigantic hoax and invent an imaginary person who would have been executed by the Roman authorities in a very public and humiliating way on one of the main Jewish holy days? Do you realize how easy this would have been to discredit?

You are jumping straight from 'not literally true' to 'deliberate, conscious hoax'. I have no doubt that many people sincerely believed in Jesus, even in the first century AD. I have no issue with the idea that people sincerely THOUGHT he was real. But that doesn't mean he was.

Personally, I think Christianity started out as just another Mystery religion. It explains why so many early historical centres of Christianity were Gnostic, and why there are so many Pagan elements to the Christian story. It also explains the notable absence of evidence for an historical Jesus. Those initiated into the inner circles of these mystery cults knew full well that these stories were allegorical. But it is the misinterpreted, literalist view, that these stories REALLY HAPPENED which has merely survived the test of time.

What's more, evidence for this theory can be found in the New Testament itself, if you are willing to look:

Hebrews 8:4 - considered something of a smoking gun. The authorship of Hebrews is hotly debated, but whoever it was certainly seemed to be under the impression that Jesus was not literally incarnated.

Hebrews 10:37 - same. Why 'come' and not 'return' or 'come again'?

Ephesians 3:4-5 - also a curious passage. Talks of knowledge of Christ coming through the Holy Spirit. Why not through Christ himself? Didn't he literally exist and tell his disciples all about himself and his mission? Why should knowledge only come through revelation? Made all the more curious because it was apparently written by Paul himself.

There are similar passages from early Christian scholars, most notably Minucius Felix, a Christian who, in his book Octavius, writes an imaginary argument between a Pagan and a Christian with the purpose of defending the Christian faith.

In it, the Pagan accuses Christians of having group sex at their gatherings, eating babies, worshipping the severed head of an ass, etc. And also this: "[s]ome say that the objects of their worship include a man who suffered death as a criminal, as well as the wretched wood of his cross; these are fitting altars for such depraved people"

The Christian responds with: "Therefore neither are gods made from dead people, since a god cannot die; nor of people that are born, since everything which is born dies." And then, in chapter 29, "For in that you attribute to our religion the worship of a criminal and his cross, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a criminal deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God."

A flat-out, unambiguous denial from an early Christian that Christians worship a crucified, earthly man.

The idea that Christianity was a Mystery religion, with all its myths and allegories which, at some point, began to be taken literally, makes good sense, and, more importantly, is a BETTER FIT FOR THE EVIDENCE. Of all the explanations of the start of the Christian religion, the idea that the gospel stories are literally true is the least plausible - not only because there is so much magic and 'impossible' deeds, but also because the historical evidence simply does not support it.

Do you also doubt that he existed?

Doubt? Yes, I certainly do. However, the idea that these myths attached themselves retroactively to a real, entirely human Jesus is one I am willing to entertain too.

Your religion, however, is not supported if Jesus was 'merely' a man. For you, it is not enough hat he existed. The most outlandish, and least likely, claims about him must be true too.

Do you realize that no one wrote anything about Alexander the Great until he had been dead for 300 to 500 years, and then there only a few sources. Absolutely nothing that compares with the historical evidence we have for Jesus.

Nevertheless there are certain points in Alexander the Great's favour when it comes to evidence. For one thing, the stories of Alexander the Great are all plausible. They depict a human being. Yes there are myths surrounding him (such as, for example, the he was the son of a god) but these supernatural bits are NOT taken as historically reliable. In contrast, the gospels describe, not a man, but an incarnated god performing miracles. There is little here besides the miraculous. This alone gives us good reason to doubt them.

The sources for Alexander are also far more historically reliable in that they identify themselves and their sources, and when their sources conflict, they openly admit this. This makes them respectable historical sources, and in conflict with the gospels.

Finally, there is primary evidence. Coins with his image, cities which bare the names he allegedly bestowed on them, and evidence of a wave of Greek culture suddenly sweeping as far as India in the mid-4th century BC. The bare bones of his story fits the facts.

Again, this is in direct contrast to Jesus. The gospels cannot even agree on key details about his birth, ministry and death, and none of these details fit with our historical record. The idea, for example, of a world-wide three-hour darkness (Luke 23:44) accompanied by a great earthquake (Matthew 27:51) and, most astonishingly of all, dead saints rising from their graves and walking around Jerusalem being seen by many people (Matthew 27:52-53) - all events which accompanied Jesus' moment of death, without even a single person at the time making even a passing reference to any of it is beyond incredible. It is ludicrous.

You want to immediately dismiss anything written or said by a Christian.

Absolutely not true. I just want the assertions of Christians to be supported. And they are not. Though a Christian merely parroting Christian doctrine does indeed make for very poor evidence, yes.

You also want things written by non-believers on Christ despite the fact that no one would have been talking about Him until Christianity had been well established.

How is it remotely possible everyone could fail to notice the miracles surrounding Jesus' life, especially the ones surrounding his crucifixion? It does not take a Christian to notice a great earthquake, 3-hour darkness or zombie saints walking around.

In the second, brief mention, Josephus calls James "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ."[78]

But notice what it says. Josephus is not necessarily saying Jesus WAS the Christ. He is merely talking about a man who was the brother of a man who was allegedly the Christ. Remember, Josephus is writing 70 years after the event about a man who allegedly lived before he was born. That's like us now writing about the start of WW2. What is his source/evidence that Jesus really WAS the Christ? His testimony can only be as reliable as his source, and we do not know what his source for this might be. This is the problem with second-hand evidence.

Besides, there are still oddities. The fact that Jesus is mentioned first, for one. The fact that he also mentions 'the Christ' without explanation of that that means, for another. There is also the point that the rest of chapter 9 goes on to tell that the Jews were furious at the stoning of James and wrote to the king, Agrippa, to have their high priest Ananus removed. Why would Jews behave in such a manner in defence of a Christian leader? Imagine the passage as a Christian interlopation, and these things make sense.

These creeds were widespread through the church and indicated an early narrative that was well known. Again, you are being extremely unreasonable and setting an impossibly high standard.

I don't think so. Creeds are just statements of religious faith. Why on Earth should we consider them historically reliable? Are we to consider them evidence that there is a God? Because people say they believe it? No. The veracity of a claim is not supported merely by belief in it.

The writings of Tacitus are extremely helpful historically for several reasons.

1) It is clear that he personally was hostile to Christianity.

Right.

2) He was a man of relatively great importance in the Roman Empire

Okay.

3) He was a historian

Agreed.

4) He shed light on what was happening to the Christians in the Roman Empire of his day (they were accused of setting Rome on fire and were being tortured and executed by Nero).

All this is very helpful information because it corroborates what we know about early church history.

I do not doubt the existence of the early church, or of Christians. I doubt the existence of Jesus.

Suffice it to say that people who spend their lives studying this stuff come to very different conclusions than you.

With respect, this is, I think, the key fallacy you are falling victim to: the argument from authority. The whole Christian community just seems to keep telling itself that there is SO much evidence for Jesus and the evidence is REALLY strong without actually considering what the evidence IS. Religion is a process of uncritically believing what you are told, and uncritically believing that supporting evidence exists seems to be part of that too...

And I have to ask. Since you are hyper skeptical about the existence of even the historical Jesus, what are you doing here? Why is this a subject you are so interested in? I'm just curious.

A fair question. Well there is a political agenda to all this too. I don't mind people believing what they want to, but when people preach things which are factually inaccurate, I believe they should be challenged. Cornelius Hunter criticises the theory of evolution to advance his own religious beliefs, and that is a dangerous agenda. And it is sad that people believe him. Anyone could stumble across here and think his posts carry weight. They only hope they have is if they see in the comments section exactly why his arguments are flawed.

Sometimes debates go off on a bit of a tangent, as they have done here...

And I have to reiterate what I said yesterday. If you are not even willing to consider that a historical Jesus really existed there isn't much use in us talking about anything else. I do appreciate your courtesy and politeness, however. It is a refreshing change from the usual hostility one encounters when talking with skeptics on the Internet.

And I appreciate your polite, civil tone too. But I am indeed perfectly willing to consider a real, historical Jesus. But I will not just accept one on little or poor evidence. I hope I have been instrumental in getting you to at least question the evidence for Jesus. It is neither as plentiful nor as strong as you obviously think. And if you go around saying that the evidence is both ample and very strong, then you are just parroting more unsubstantiated dogma. Whenever anyone tells you the evidence for Jesus is good, never let them end it there. Always ask what it actually IS. I'm sure you'll find, as I have, the same weak, limp evidence being wheeled out time and again.

Thanks for your indepth reply. I can tell this is a topic that you've put some time into studying. Becoming an expert in the historical evidence is something that is on my todo list. I have several books (actually tomes) on the subject of the historical evidence and I want to read through all of them. Up until this point I've focused more on the physical sciences, but this is another subject I'd like to master.

Something tells me that discussing this with you is probably a waste of time as your mind is most likely made up, but for the sake of any readers I'd like to point a few things out.

First of all, I'd suggest checking out a debate on the resurrection between Mike Licona and Richard Carrier which you can view here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EGrzxkozVU

Mike Licona is defending the historicity of the resurrection while scholar and historian Richard Carrier (whose atheistic credentials are enormous, for example being an author and editor for the Skeptical Inquirer and infidels.org) is arguing that there are other theories to explain the empty tomb and the rise of Christianity, perhaps that the disciples had self induced visions of Christ after the death of Jesus.

But notice that he completely agrees that the historical Jesus lived. He never proposes that Jesus was a mythological person. If he did this he would probably be laughed out of the room and never be able to get a job at any respected university again. I cannot understate how much on the radical fringe your position is. It ranks right up there with holocaust denial, 9/11 truthers, and alien abductions. Quite frankly, it makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

I have limited time and I don't want to waste it refuting everything you say point by point, but to illustrate to the readers how atrocious your line of reasoning is let me just talk about one of your lines of evidence:

What's more, evidence for this theory can be found in the New Testament itself, if you are willing to look:

Hebrews 8:4 ...Hebrews 10:37 ...Ephesians 3:4-5

Hebrews 8

1The point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, 2and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man.

3Every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices, and so it was necessary for this one also to have something to offer. 4If he were on earth, he would not be a priest, for there are already men who offer the gifts prescribed by the law

Hebrews 8:4 is clearly saying that Christ is in Heaven serving in the sanctuary of God. This is completely consistent with the rest of the New Testament (and indeed the prophecies in the Old Testament - see Daniel 7:13) which state that He ascended into Heaven after His resurrection. Paul is drawing a contrast between imperfect priests who served in tabernacles on Earth and Christ the true high Priest who serves at the tabernacle in Heaven.

Heberews 10:37 talks about the second coming of Christ. There is absolutely nothing here that contradicts anything in the gospels.

Regarding Ephesians 3 Paul clearly explains what he is talking about if you just read the next couple of verses:

that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. 4In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. 6This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

Now since you seem willing to (at least on some level) use New Testament scripture as evidence, lets take a closer look and see if they imply that the apostles were really a bunch of gnostics who saw Jesus as just some sort of a spiritual/figurative person or a some sort of ideal:

Acts 2: 22-24Men of Israel, listen to this: Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know. 23This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men,d put him to death by nailing him to the cross. 24But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him

Romans 1Paul, a servanta of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord

1 Corinthians 15:14-17And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins

Hebrews 2:14-17Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

1 Timothy 3:16Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness:He was manifested in the flesh,vindicatedf by the Spirit, seen by angels,proclaimed among the nations,believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

1 John 4:1-3Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

2 John 1:7I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.

I'm going to stop here but I think you get the idea. Nowhere in the entire New Testament do we get the idea that Jesus was simply some sort of gnostic ideal. Indeed, some of these scriptures are quite outspoken against the idea that Jesus didn't come in the flesh and labels those who promote this idea as deceivers and antichrists.

Do you really not see why many people would find that reasoning a bit circular and therefore not very convincing?

Once again you pipe in with a completely useless and irrelevant comment in a desperate attempt to take a cheap shot and get attention for yourself. I said in an earlier post that you cannot possibly be this stupid, I am starting to wonder if I was wrong.

To illustrate to the readers of this blog your line of reasoning: It is perfectly fine for the ATHEIST (Ritchie) to quote New Testament scripture to try to prove that the apostles were really just a bunch of gnostics who thought Jesus was merely some sort of spiritual/figurative metaphor for higher ideals.

Meanwhile it is circular reasoning and self-serving for the CHRISTIAN to quote New Testament scripture in order to prove that the apostles really thought that Jesus was a real person to came down to Earth in the flesh and lived among us.

In other words, its ok to use the New Testament to prove atheism but its not ok to use the New Testament to prove Christianity!

Behond, another compelling argument brought to us by the great Thorton!

In other words, its ok to use the New Testament to prove atheism but its not ok to use the New Testament to prove Christianity!

Except Ritchie wasn't using the New Testament to prove atheism. He merely cited parts of it to show the inconsistencies and contradictions in your own "Bible is always correct" position. You're the only guy pushing the silly circular logic, trying to prove the Bible is true because passages in it say it is true.

At least you finally wised up enough to drop the "Mitochondrial Eve was the only woman alive in her time" bit of stupidity.

One last thing. I'll also take your mockery of the scriptures I used to disprove Ritchie's hypothesis as proof that you agree with me that the New Testament authors all thought Jesus was a real person who lived and died and that they weren't a bunch of gnostics who thought of Jesus as merely some sort of metaphorical person who represented higher ideals.

One last thing. I'll also take your mockery of the scriptures I used to disprove Ritchie's hypothesis as proof that you agree with me that the New Testament authors all thought Jesus was a real person who lived and died and that they weren't a bunch of gnostics who thought of Jesus as merely some sort of metaphorical person who represented higher ideals.

Neither VF nor I mocked scripture. We were both agreeing on the dumb circular logic you are using to try and prove your beliefs are true.

Why do you Fundies always have to start bawling about being the persecuted martyr every time people point out the flaws in your arguments?

"I cannot understate how much on the radical fringe your position is. It ranks right up there with holocaust denial, 9/11 truthers, and alien abductions. Quite frankly, it makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously."

Irony meters everywhere exploded when you said that.

Remarks like that (and all your other ones) are enough to make me feel embarrassed and disgusted to be the same species as you are. Ya know, maybe you and your ilk were specially created; specially created by a crazed maniac to be mentally deranged, narcissistic morons who think that they ARE an all knowing god.

When I read the rancid, two-faced, delusional garbage you spew I feel like I need to take a shower to wash away the filth that has splattered on me. You really are quite insane, and a pompous uneducated jerk to boot.

When I read the rancid, two-faced, delusional garbage you spew I feel like I need to take a shower to wash away the filth that has splattered on me. You really are quite insane, and a pompous uneducated jerk to boot.

Readers, I'd like to say that the atheists on this blog have done a terrific job of representing their point of view.

Their arguments are mostly composed of ugly remarks and personal attacks, wild conspiracy theories, bald assertions which are often easily proven wrong with a 10 second google search, and hyper-skepticism in the face of well established scholarship.

They are completely sure about what happened 200,000 (or even millions) years ago and can tell you anything you want to know about those time periods but are completely befuddled and hyper-skeptical about historical evidence that happened a mere 2,000 years ago.

I am extremely greatful to them for showing me the best alternative to my worldview.

Something tells me that discussing this with you is probably a waste of time as your mind is most likely made up,

Not at all. If good evidence was forthcoming, I would happily put my hands up. The problem, as I see it, is the lack of good evidence.

First of all, I'd suggest checking out a debate on the resurrection between Mike Licona and Richard Carrier which you can view here

An interesting debate indeed. And if I may, I'd like to focus for a moment on just how weak Mike Licona's evidence really is.

For evidence of the crucifixion of Jesus, he cites Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian and Mara Bar Serapion. Josephus and Tacitus you mentioned above. But the other two are no better. Lucian was born around 125 AD and was writing in the second-centuy. The date of Serapion's letter is highly debatable, being anywhere between 70 AD and the third century. But it also never mentions Jesus specifically. It just mentions in passing that the Jews executed their 'wise King'. That is all he says. There is no way to know who he means. There is also the point that the Jews did not kill Jesus - the Romans did.

All in all this is very poor evidence. Maybe Licona has more? But this is all he presented. And it amounts to very little indeed.

For evidence of the empty tomb, he first of all says that if there was a body, that could have been used to falsify the empty tomb claim. But this relies on there being a tomb in the first place. If the whole Jesus story was a myth, there would have been no body to falsify the empty tomb claim.

Next, he cites Justin (Marytr, presumably) and Tertullian as sources for evidence of the empty tomb. But this is absolutely outrageous since Justin Martyr lived 103-165 AD and Tertullian lived 160-225 AD. How can 2nd - 3rd century scholars provide "outside corroboration" for an event that took place in 33 AD? The idea is ludicrous.

I took many notes, but those are the salient points I wanted to raise here.

But notice that he completely agrees that the historical Jesus lived. He never proposes that Jesus was a mythological person.

True. But that is not the focus of the debate. The focus of the debate is the historicity of the resurrection. Carrier's argument still works (with a few very minor tweaks) even if Jesus was not real - it does not RELY on Jesus being a real person. True, Carrier does say that he accepts Jesus was real, but he does not elaborate on that, nor show what evidence has satisfied him on this point.

I cannot understate how much on the radical fringe your position is. It ranks right up there with holocaust denial, 9/11 truthers, and alien abductions. Quite frankly, it makes it very hard to take anything you say seriously.

Like Creationism...?

Less flippantly, you are still just appealing to authority. If so many people have been so soundly convinced, then why is it so difficult to come up with the solid, impressive evidence which has convinced them? It seems to me you are half-refusing to even consider my position. As though you can dismiss my point by laughing it away instead of addressing it with evidence.

Let's look again at a point I raised earlier. It's one I really want to stress. According to the gospels, the moment of Jesus' death was accompanied by a great earthquake, a 3-hour darkness, and the bodies of dead saints rising from their graves and walking around Jerusalem being seen by many.

It's easy to overlook just how extraordinary this claim is. If true, this would have been a day like no other in recorded history. A great earthquake, a 3-hour darkness, and the dead coming back to life EN MASSE!!! This is quite probably the most extraordniary miracle claim in the whole New Testament, maybe even the whole Bible.

And yet it is totally unsupported. There is absolutely no evidence at all of an earthquake or 3-hour-darkness, in the Middle East or anywhere nearby in 33 AD, let alone worldwide ones. And as for the zombie saints, well, how can that POSSIBLY have gone unremarked on by people of the day? If fact, it is only recorded by one gospel - Matthew. Why don't even the other gospels, or any other books of the NT, mention it? Even Matthew mentions it only in passing and never elaborates on what actually HAPPENS to them.

Are there historians living at the time who SHOULD have noticed? Yes - plenty. There is, for example, Philo of Alexandria, 20 BC - 50 AD, a Jewish philosopher who lived in or around Jerusalem during the alleged time of Jesus' ministry. He noted down everything of interest to the Jewish community, including several 'false messiahs' to pour scorn on them, but never anyone matching Jesus' description. And certainly nothing mentioning these (or any other of Jesus' alleged) mracles.

There is Justus of Tiberius, who in 80 AD wrote a history of Galilee covering Jesus' time and does not mention him or any of these supposed miracles. Seneca the Younger (3 BC - 60's AD) was a Roman who wrote extensively on schools of ethics, but never mentions Jesus. Pliny the Elder (23 AD - 79 AD) was a voracious scientist and natural historian and wrote a 37 volume book called Natural History, yet never mentions an earthquake or 3-hour darkness, much less the zombie saints.

The only reasonable conclusion in my book is that these events did not happen. They are, at the very least, rhoterical flourishes (ie, lies) the gospel writers added to their accounts to make them more dramatic. Harmless, you might think? Well, not really. If they can invent such enormous fabrications about things which could have been easily checked, even in ancient times, then we can ask what reason we have to believe ANY of the gospels. Pull on that dangling thread and the whole tapestry comes undone (if that metaphor works. Embroidery's not my field...).

Hebrews 8:4 is clearly saying that Christ is in Heaven serving in the sanctuary of God. This is completely consistent with the rest of the New Testament ... which state that He ascended into Heaven after His resurrection.

Hebrews 8 and 9 describe the connection between the material and spiritual realms. Actions in the divine realm are mirrored by actions in the human, mortal one. The Jewish high priests offer blood sacrifices at the tabernacle just as Jesus must make his blood sacrifice at the "greater and more perfect tabernacle" (9:11) of Heaven. So if Jesus were on Earth, he would have nothing to do, as there were already priests making blood sacrifices at the Jewish tabernacle.

IF HE [JESUS] WERE ON EARTH he would have had nothing to do. How can the author be blind to the fact that Jesus HAD BEEN on Earth and DID have a purpose? A purpose which was, in fact, essential to God's divine plan, if we are to believe conventional Christian thinking.

Heberews 10:37 talks about the second coming of Christ. There is absolutely nothing here that contradicts anything in the gospels.

It does not say 'second'. It just says that Jesus will 'come'. Why not 'return', or 'come again'? I'm not saying it's conclusive, but it is odd.

Regarding Ephesians 3 Paul clearly explains what he is talking about if you just read the next couple of verses:

If you'll forgive me, what you showed doesn't at all contradict or explain what I was saying. All Ephesians 3:6, is saying is that by accepting the gospel (lit translation: 'good news', not the specific Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), Gentiles can become fellow-heirs of the holy spirit.

I'm going to stop here but I think you get the idea. Nowhere in the entire New Testament do we get the idea that Jesus was simply some sort of gnostic ideal.

But don't forget the NT we have today is the product of editing officially made canon by the Emporer Constantine in the 4th century. There were many, many works that did not make the official cut.

Whether the writers of the New Testament books were gnostic, we can argue all day, but it matters little. That there were gnostic Christians at the very start of the official Church is certain. It's just that it was not their denomination which happened to catch the eye of a Roman Emporer, and thus get catapulted into Empire-wide respectability overnight.

Indeed, some of these scriptures are quite outspoken against the idea that Jesus didn't come in the flesh and labels those who promote this idea as deceivers and antichrists.

Which merely adds fuel to the notion that such claims were indeed in circulation at the time.

There is also the point that the Jews did not kill Jesus - the Romans did.

The Jews arrested Jesus, turned him over to the Roman authorities, and demanded His execution, despite numerous attempts by Pontius Pilate to free Jesus. To any sane person this looks like the Jews had Jesus killed and any reader of Serapion's letter would have completely understood what Serapion was writing about. Yet you make this bald assertion which has nothing to do with nothing and pretend that this completely discredits the historical evidence from Serapion.

You are also dodging my main point. If Jesus was never crucified, if indeed Jesus never even really existed, then all Carrier had to do was demonstrate that we have good reason to doubt the existence of Jesus so arguing about whether or not He rose from the dead is a moot point. Instead Carrier comletely agrees with Licona that Jesus lived and died.

Even though I fundamentally disagree with them, Carrier and Ehrman are very smart guys who have spent their lives researching this stuff. And believe me, they are both HIGHLY motivated to discredit Christianity. They have basically devoted their entire lives to this cause. If there was good reason to doubt that Jesus ever even lived, we would be hearing about it.

It speaks volumes that you (probably) completley believe in things like neo-darwinism, abiogenesis, and multiple universes despite the fact that there is no real scientific evidence for any of these things, but are hyperskeptical of historical evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus that even avowed enemies of Christianity accept.

And yet it is totally unsupported. There is absolutely no evidence at all of an earthquake or 3-hour-darkness,

Well, actually there is some independent historical evidence for the darkness and the earthquake. If you look a the writings of Julius Africanus who quoted the historian Thallus, he writes:

Upon the whole world there came a most fearful darkness. Many rocks were split in two by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. It seems very unreasonable to me that Thallus, in the third book of his histories, would try to explain away this darkness as an eclipse of the sun. For the Jews celebrate their Passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the death of our Saviour falls on the day before the Passover. But an eclipse of the sun can only take place when the moon comes under the sun, how then could an eclipse have occurred when the moon is directly opposite the sun? (Scientifically it is impossible to have a full moon on the same day that there is an eclipse of the sun.)

Another 1st century historian name Phlegon wrote a history called "Olympiads" and Julius Africanus quotes him as saying:

Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth . . . It is evident that he did not know of any such events in previous years.

And at any rate, the focus of this discussion has been the historical existence of Jesus, rather than the resurrection or the extraordinary events that occurred during the crucifixion. I'll be happy to talk about these other things, but only after you concede that Jesus was a real person who lived and died.

Which merely adds fuel to the notion that such claims were indeed in circulation at the time.

Of course they were in circulation. The easiest way to debunk Christianity would be deny that Jesus ever even existed. And people were just as motivated back then to discredit Christianity as they are now. This should tell you something.

I know you've previously expressed exasperation at Julius Africanus citing the works of Thallus and I have no doubt that you'll trumpet out the same protests to try to discredit the evidence from Phlegon.

The problem you're going to run into this time is that Julius Africanus was not the only person who cited the works of Phlegon. Other historians also cited his works and reference the same events.

In summary here are the words of the Olympiad cited by Julius Africanus:

In the 4th year of the 202nd Olympiad, there was a great eclipse of the Sun, greater than had ever been known before, for at the sixth hour the day was changed into night, and the stars were seen in the heavens. An earthquake occurred in Bythinia and overthrew a great part of the city of Nicia

Which matches perfectly with Matthew 27:45From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.

Another historian, Philipon (with Origen), confirms the historicity of Phlegon's statement by writing,

And about this darkness - Phlegon recalls it in the Olympiads...Phlegon mentioned the eclipse which took place during the crucifixion of the Lord Christ, and no other (eclipse), it is clear that he did not know from his sources about any (similar) eclipse in previous times ...and this is shown by the historical account of Tiberius Caesar.

A great earthquake, a 3-hour darkness, and the dead coming back to life EN MASSE!!! This is quite probably the most extraordniary miracle claim in the whole New Testament, maybe even the whole Bible.

It appears to me that we have a fair amount of extra-biblical evidence which corroborates the story of the extended period of darkness and the earthquakes.

Quite honestly, I've learned some new things! I knew about Thallus but I don't know about the other evidence. Thanks for bringing this all of this up, it's a fascinating subject that makes me want to learn more!

I've gone to a lecture with Licona before and have his thesis on the historical evidence for the resurrection. I plan to read through it at some point (along with the works of several other scholars) so I can do a better job of discussing the evidence for Christianity from this perspective in the future.

Ritchie (conclusion): A great earthquake, a 3-hour darkness, and the dead coming back to life EN MASSE!!! This is quite probably the most extraordniary miracle claim in the whole New Testament, maybe even the whole Bible.

It appears to me that we have a fair amount of extra-biblical evidence which corroborates the story of the extended period of darkness and the earthquakes.

What about the hundreds of zombies? Any corroboration for them?

Why do you still think that if part of a book describes something real that all of the book must be real? My questions to you about King Kong and Sherlock Holmes being real remain unanswered.

The Jews arrested Jesus, turned him over to the Roman authorities, and demanded His execution, despite numerous attempts by Pontius Pilate to free Jesus. To any sane person this looks like the Jews had Jesus killed

Ummm, not to me it doesn't. The Romans executed him under Roman authority. Whether the Jews forced Pilate's hand is immaterial. It was the Romans who killed Jesus.

and any reader of Serapion's letter would have completely understood what Serapion was writing about.

Whoa there! That's incredibly presumptuous. All Serapion mentions is that the Jews killed their 'wise king'. That's all. No further identifiers. He could be talking about any number of high priests, would-be messiahs, great generals or even, actual kings. The assumption that this is Jesus is very preemptive.

Yet you make this bald assertion which has nothing to do with nothing and pretend that this completely discredits the historical evidence from Serapion.

I am saying we can hardly take this as good historical evidence for Jesus, and we can't.

You are also dodging my main point. If Jesus was never crucified, if indeed Jesus never even really existed, then all Carrier had to do was demonstrate that we have good reason to doubt the existence of Jesus so arguing about whether or not He rose from the dead is a moot point.

The focal point of the debate was the ressurection. That is, I suppose, why Carrier focussed his argument on it. Had he sought to discredit the idea of Jesus ever existing, he and Licona would have been having almost a different discussion to each other.

They have basically devoted their entire lives to this cause. If there was good reason to doubt that Jesus ever even lived, we would be hearing about it.

You have it backwards. If there was solid evidence for a historical Jesus, we would be hearing about it. The evangelicals would be trumpeting it from here 'til kingdom come. Instead, they fidget and fumble when the topic of evidence comes up. That is extremely telling.

It speaks volumes that you (probably) completley believe in things like neo-darwinism, abiogenesis, and multiple universes despite the fact that there is no real scientific evidence for any of these things, but are hyperskeptical of historical evidence for the existence of the historical Jesus that even avowed enemies of Christianity accept.

Oh that you don't see the beautiful, beautiful irony of this paragraph. The theory of evolution (which is what I assume you mean be 'neo-darwinism') is one of the most well-evidenced theories in the whole of science.

I take it from this that you believe in some form of ID/Creationism? Why do you not take your own advice and submit to the consensus of scientists, I wonder?

And just for the record, I don't actually think anyone is proposing multi-universe as anything other than a hypothesis just yet. Possible? Yes. Plausible? Perhaps. More likely that the God hypothesis? Most definitely. But a well-evidenced scientific fact? Not quite yet, I think.

Well, actually there is some independent historical evidence for the darkness and the earthquake. If you look a the writings of Julius Africanus who quoted the historian Thallus, he writes:

Again, no, George Syncellus SAYS that Julius Africanus says that Thallus says this. That's quite a few leaps, and uncorroborated ones at that. That's usually enough to put off most historians.

But be that as it may, even if we are to consider it, we don't really know what Thallus says - Julius doesn't quote him. He just complains that Thallus brushes a darkness off as a natural event when he [Julius] thinks it is the darkness of Jesus' crucifixion.

Now, astronomer Mark Kidger has calculated there would have been a total solar eclipse in the region in November of 29 AD. Isn't it at least possible that THIS be the darkness Thallus is talking about, which Julius is misinterpreting via his Christian presumptions? And even that is assuming George Syncellus is accurately representing Julius, who is accurately representing Thallus. That's a lot of uncorroborated steps there. It's about as weak as evidence gets.

Another 1st century historian name Phlegon wrote a history called "Olympiads" and Julius Africanus quotes him as saying:

Phlegon lived in the second century AD, so yet again the problem of proximity to the event comes back to haunt us. Seriously, doesn't it at all bother you that so many people whose work is quoted as 'very strong evidence' for Jesus actually lived centuries after him?

But in any case, the problem here is one of reliability. In his work On Marvels, Phlegon tells stories of ghosts, men giving birth, centaurs, a 1000-year-old prohpetess, a battlefield corpse speaking oracles and the animated severed head of a Roman general.

Phlegon was no Christian (that we know of) but he clearly lived to tell fanciful tales. He is plainly unreliable as a historical source.

But I will concede the point. I ammend my original sentiment to: There is absolutely no historical evidence for the miracles of the ministry and especially crucifixion of Jesus that can be considered in any way reliable and trustworthy.

I'll be happy to talk about these other things, but only after you concede that Jesus was a real person who lived and died.

Why should that be necessary?

And for that matter, why should I make such a concession? My complaint was the lack of strong, reliable evidence for the existence of Jesus, and you have shown me nothing to cause me to change my mind.

I am not just being stubborn, I am not demanding an impossibly high standard of evidence - the problem quite simply is that no evidence for Jesus measures up as being particularly strong or reliable (or for that matter, plentiful, for the most important human being who ever lived). Remember, we do not lack historians of the period, what we lack is ones supporting the NT.

Of course they were in circulation. The easiest way to debunk Christianity would be deny that Jesus ever even existed. And people were just as motivated back then to discredit Christianity as they are now. This should tell you something.

I'm not sure what you think it SHOULD be telling me, but it is telling me something. People have been trying to discredit scientology since its very inception, after all...

It appears to me that we have a fair amount of extra-biblical evidence which corroborates the story of the extended period of darkness and the earthquakes.

That evidence being:

1) third-hand hearsay spanning 8 centuries, while a naturalistic alternative explanation is at hand, and

2) the words of a second-century fantacist?

You'll forgive me if I remain unimpressed, I hope...?

Quite honestly, I've learned some new things! I knew about Thallus but I don't know about the other evidence. Thanks for bringing this all of this up, it's a fascinating subject that makes me want to learn more!

It certainly is interesting, I'll give you that. But if you are planning to read more, were you planning on reading books which merely seek to confirm what you already believe, or challenge it? Confirmation bias is a logical fallacy, after all...

What about the hundreds of zombies? Any corroboration for them?

I'm with Thornton here. I wanted to hear what you make of them. Come on, own up, do you REALLY consider it likely that that really happened? Did EVERYONE else except Matthew totally fail to notice this event? Is Matthew telling the gospel truth? Be honest...

No offense but your personal opinions don't count as evidence. I realize that you have a strong atheistic bias and anything you see is going to immediately be processed in a way that will reconfirm your atheistic worldview.

You've asked me some interesting questions, and I would enjoy continuing our dialogue at some point in the future, but for now I think our discussion has run its course. Let's agree to disagree and pick this up some other time.

It takes an unusual person or set of circumstances to change a worldview. I used to be an atheist myself. I despised Christians, took advantage of many opportunities to ridicule and make fun of them, and emotionally wanted for atheism to be true and for Christianity to be false. Perhaps this is why I enjoy talking to atheists so much. Who knows? My point is that I know what its like to be Thorton.

Btw, here is another debate between Licona and Carrier. It's actually their first debate. If you have some free time I'd suggest listening to it. Licona (and Carrier) are both very brilliant men who are interesting to listen to. (And btw, they both think the Jesus was a real person who lived and died).

That is absolutely true. They don't. But can you really suggest any of the evidence you have presented amounts to good, solid evidence? Can you stand by any particular source objectively being a good one? I know I am an atheist, but I am trying to be as clear-headed and unbiased as I can be, and I honestly cannot see how any source you have given can be considered even remotely reliable.

I have to be honest - it seems to me the bias here seems to be coming from your end. You, and apparently a lot of scholars too (but then is that really surprising since they are CHRISTIAN scholars, after all?) WANT there to be evidence for Jesus. You believe he was real, and therefore you are keen to see the flimsiest, thinnest references as rock solid reliable evidence.

I realize that you have a strong atheistic bias and anything you see is going to immediately be processed in a way that will reconfirm your atheistic worldview.

If there was evidence for Jesus then it wouldn't really phase me to admit it. After all I don't really have an issue with there being a real, human Jesus, about whom these stories just got exaggerated and blown up until they reached mythical proportions. That position doesn't challenge my atheism in the slightest. I am not predisposed by my atheism to prefer the 'no Jesus' hypothesis to the 'human Jesus' hypothesis. I choose it because I see no evidence for the 'human Jesus' hypothesis.

I used to be an atheist myself. I despised Christians, took advantage of many opportunities to ridicule and make fun of them, and emotionally wanted for atheism to be true and for Christianity to be false. Perhaps this is why I enjoy talking to atheists so much.

Interesting. I used to be a Christian. It faded largely when I started to critically analyze my faith and found no evidence/reason to hold to any of it. I imagine this is why I enjoy talking to Christians - just in case any of them can come up with the justification for faith I never could.

You've asked me some interesting questions, and I would enjoy continuing our dialogue at some point in the future, but for now I think our discussion has run its course. Let's agree to disagree and pick this up some other time.

But can you really suggest any of the evidence you have presented amounts to good, solid evidence? Can you stand by any particular source objectively being a good one?

Hmmm...I think they are all good sources of evidence. I guess if I had to pick a favorite it would be the evidence from Tacitus, the Roman Senator and historian, in Annals (written in AD 116):

Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind...

It verifies important historical facts, that the Christians were extremely numerous in Rome early in the 1st century and were being tortured and executed and Pontius Pilate executed Jesus.)

But the thing that really stands out to me is its larger sociological implication. Jesus predicted that the Christians would be hated:

Matthew 10:22

and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

So one way that I often like to empirically test Christianity, so to speak, is to try to observe human behavior to see if Jesus was right. Someone who publicly self-identifies as a Christian and/or speaks out for Christian values is often subjected to an intense amount of hostility. Even on this very forum you have people like Thorton and "The Whole Truth" who can barely contain themselves. The are so full of anger and rage that they lash out at any opportunity. I find this behavior extremely fascinating and confirmatory of the words Jesus spoke. And Christians are still accused of being haters today, just like they were 2,000 years ago. So the bible was right after all, there is an animosity and depravity of the human heart that often manifests itself in deranged anger against God's followers.

but then is that really surprising since they are CHRISTIAN scholars, after all

Well, I kept going out of my way to emphasize that very smart atheistic scholars like Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier, and the ultra liberal scholars of the Jesus Seminar all think Jesus was a real person who lived and was crucified. For some reason you never found this noteworthy. You just kept repeating the "not impressed...not good enough" mantra over and over again. Now you are trying to imply that every scholar who thinks that Jesus was a real person is an evangelical scholar with an agenda. Seems like you're trying to have it both ways here.

It faded largely when I started to critically analyze my faith and found no evidence/reason to hold to any of it

Then we appear to be flip sides of the same coin! My atheism faded when I critically evaluated that and saw the complete lack of evidence for it and the overwhelming evidence for theism!

Pleasure talking with you.

Likewise. BTW, I wish to make a correction. The youtube debate I posted in my previous message was the actually the SECOND debate between Carrier and Licona. (It's about two hours long but its REALLY good. Check it out when you get a chance). The other debate was the first debate. Sorry I got that mixed up. See you around.

Not to want to sound like I'm making false goodbyes, but found it impossible not to respond to your last :D

Hmmm...I think they are all good sources of evidence.

Do you? What exactly is your definition of a 'good source'? What on Earth is a bad source is these are good ones? Or are they all good sources just because they mention Jesus?

I guess if I had to pick a favorite it would be the evidence from Tacitus

I think I would agree - this probably is the best source we have. And it still isn't a terribly good one. Written in 115 AD, by an author born in 56 AD, this is definitely not eye-witness testimony to Jesus. Tacitus had to get his info on Jesus from somewhere, and a contemporary Christian source is the most obvious candidate. What reason would he have had to doubt that Christians worshipped a man put to death by Pilate in Judea? It is nearly a century late, unsourced, and most likely just a repeat of Christian dogma, and yet it is still the best apologists have in the way of evidence.

Jesus predicted that the Christians would be hated

You realise, I hope, that Matthew was written around 80-85 AD? When the persecution of Christians was not so much a 'prediction' as stating the obvious?

The are so full of anger and rage that they lash out at any opportunity. I find this behavior extremely fascinating and confirmatory of the words Jesus spoke.

Far be it from me to deny that you ever get a cross word on the subject of religion, but come on! This 'we are so persecuted' act is just embarrassing. Last time I checked, Christians make up over a quarter of the planet and command more than their fair share of wealth, influence and power.

I know it's part of the Religious Right's odious propaganda machine to imagine that barbarians are beating at the doors slavering to smash your holy idols. I know they cry 'oppression' whenever anyone denies them special privileges (for example, the Discovery Institute, who have their noses out of joint that nasty oppressors won't just uncritically accept their religious claims, and instead insist they come up with actual SCIENCE) but playing the victim when there are so many TV channels, magazines, book publishers, megachurches, private colleges, evangelism programs, political lobbying organizations, etc., focused solely on your agenda is utterly ridiculous.

So the bible was right after all, there is an animosity and depravity of the human heart that often manifests itself in deranged anger against God's followers.

I really don't know why you are fastening this accusation to atheists. For every one that has ever slung insults at you, I bet I've had ten wishing me perpetual agony being tortured in the everlasting fires of damnation while they chuckle and spit on me from high above. Don't pretend Christians as a rule are any better.

For some reason you never found this noteworthy.

I believe I said that I couldn't really comment on the evidence that satisfied them on this point since they did not provide any.

Now you are trying to imply that every scholar who thinks that Jesus was a real person is an evangelical scholar with an agenda.

I am simply at a loss to come up with a better reason why such flimsy, limp evidence is accepted as reliable.

Then we appear to be flip sides of the same coin! My atheism faded when I critically evaluated that and saw the complete lack of evidence for it and the overwhelming evidence for theism!

Ummm, what evidence for atheism would you expect, I wonder?

And what 'overwhelming' evidence for theism did you find? I hope for your sake it's better than your evidence for Jesus.

Or maybe that's just opening a whole new epic-length thread? Maybe we should call it quits there? Who knows?

So one way that I often like to empirically test Christianity, so to speak, is to try to observe human behavior to see if Jesus was right. Someone who publicly self-identifies as a Christian and/or speaks out for Christian values is often subjected to an intense amount of hostility. Even on this very forum you have people like Thorton and "The Whole Truth" who can barely contain themselves. The are so full of anger and rage that they lash out at any opportunity.

LOL! Poor little Christian martyr! Everybody is mean to him! Everybody hates him! He's so good and pure but no one gives him love!

Wouldn't be a C/E discussion board without the Fundy whining about how he's so mistreated.

I find this behavior extremely fascinating and confirmatory of the words Jesus spoke. And Christians are still accused of being haters today, just like they were 2,000 years ago. So the bible was right after all, there is an animosity and depravity of the human heart that often manifests itself in deranged anger against God's followers.

Here's a free clue for you wgbutler: What generates anger and animosity with people is you being a pompous arrogant blowhard with zero listening or reasoning skill who's only here to proselytize. It has nothing to do with your particular religious beliefs, and everything to do with your behavior.

But you won't get it. You're perfectly happy playing the poor persecuted victim.

Do you? What exactly is your definition of a 'good source'? What on Earth is a bad source is these are good ones? Or are they all good sources just because they mention Jesus?

I would consider a good source anything that the majority of scholars consider to be relevant. Contrary to what you might be trying to imply, I'm not some little puppy eager to lap up anything that lands on the floor with the name "Jesus" on it. For example, in our long discussion I've never once cited the James Ossuary because that evidence is controversial even though some respected scholars do consider it to be legitimate.

What reason would he have had to doubt that Christians worshipped a man put to death by Pilate in Judea?

As a Roman Senator, governor, and scholar committed to writing accurate history, one would have hoped that he would have had access to official Roman government records to confirm his historical writings and that he would have taken precautions to ensure he was recording accurate information. And at the very least, his writings confirm that Christianity had quickly spread through the Roman Empire by the early 100s despite massive efforts to exterminate it, which is consistent with what we see in the New Testament book of Acts and the epistles.

When the persecution of Christians was not so much a 'prediction' as stating the obvious?

The greater point I was making is that the same behavioral patterns that existed back then continue to this day. Did the writer of Matthew also know how Christians would be viewed 2,000 years later?

Far be it from me to deny that you ever get a cross word on the subject of religion, but come on! This 'we are so persecuted' act is just embarrassing.

I wasn't complaining. Quite frankly we Christians have it very good here in the United States. In many other places in the world it is quite dangerous, often lethal, to openly practice your faith. I've met people from Egypt, Pakistan, and India who have moved here because their churches were being blown up and they were being burned to death. Having some nasty secular humanists insult you, deny you tenure or file lawsuits against you is nothing to compared to that.

For every one that has ever slung insults at you, I bet I've had ten wishing me perpetual agony being tortured in the everlasting fires of damnation while they chuckle and spit on me from high above. Don't pretend Christians as a rule are any better.

You can empirically measure this. For example, Frank Turek recently commented in a podcast that he went to a youtube site that showed a William Lane Craig debate and counted up the nasty and insulting comments from the commenters. And there were a few mean comments here and there from Christians, but the ratio was like 20 to 1 or something completely ridiculous where the atheists would usually be the ones with the snarky remarks, insults and personal attacks.

Again, don't take this as a complaint. Jesus promised us that we are blessed when people insult us for His sake, so every time someone sends a nasty comment my way, I'm actually kind of grateful!

I believe I said that I couldn't really comment on the evidence that satisfied them on this point since they did not provide any.

As you wish. Here is more of the interview with Bart Ehrman:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdqJyk-dtLs

If you have a problem with his line of reasoning, take it up with Ehrman. Write him some emails. Once you've convinced him that there isn't any good evidence for Jesus' existence, get back to me and I'll be genuinely impressed.

Most all Fundies tend to be pretty obnoxious and pushy, but the absolute worst are the "born again" flavor like wgbutler here. Those are the ones who in order to make themselves feel better go around preaching to people:

"I used to be an evil, lying, cheating, stealing, cursing, kitten barbecuing, scumbag atheist just like you until I SAW THE LIGHT!"

I would consider a good source anything that the majority of scholars consider to be relevant.

Again, that's the fallacy of authority. You're not really examining the evidence yourself, you're just accepting what you're told to accept.

Contrary to what you might be trying to imply, I'm not some little puppy eager to lap up anything that lands on the floor with the name "Jesus" on it.

It does seem that you are overly keen to accept anything that supports your vision of Jesus. Some of the sources of evidence you have provided are as weak as evidence gets, but you don't seem phased by, or even to really acknowledge this.

As a Roman Senator, governor, and scholar committed to writing accurate history, one would have hoped that he would have had access to official Roman government records to confirm his historical writings

We have no evidence to support this. We have no evidence the Romans kept such records. And even if they had, Rome had burnt to the ground since 33 AD. Besides which, he incorrectly refers to Pilate as 'procurator' (the title of his own time) not 'prefect' (the title of Pilate's time). I'm not saying he lied, but he hardly scrupulously checked every detail. The idea that he is getting his picture of Jesus from official Roman sources is a long shot.

And at the very least, his writings confirm that Christianity had quickly spread through the Roman Empire by the early 100s despite massive efforts to exterminate it, which is consistent with what we see in the New Testament book of Acts and the epistles.

Late 100's, not early. Besides that, this is an assertion which I am not at all challenging. This does not imply the Jesus was a real person, though.

The greater point I was making is that the same behavioral patterns that existed back then continue to this day. Did the writer of Matthew also know how Christians would be viewed 2,000 years later?

I see no reason to think so.

You can empirically measure this. For example, Frank Turek recently commented in a podcast that he went to a youtube site...

Even if true, this is a single case. It proves nothing. I'm not sure what you are trying to imply (that Christianity has a tendency to make people nicer, apparently), but if you are then how exactly do you explain that atheists are vastly underrepresented in US prisons?

http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

I've met people from Egypt, Pakistan, and India who have moved here because their churches were being blown up and they were being burned to death. Having some nasty secular humanists insult you, deny you tenure or file lawsuits against you is nothing to compared to that.

Well, exactly!

If you have a problem with his line of reasoning, take it up with Ehrman. Write him some emails.

a) Completely disregard the life research of thousands of scholars and instead accept the word of some random guy on the Internet who has nothing better to do with his free time except hang out on intelligent design websites and promote atheism?

or

b) Refuse to believe ANYTHING in ancient history unless and until I get a Ph.D. in antiquities, learn all the ancient languages, and physically examine all the pieces of historical evidence we have available!

But let me guess, I SHOULD wholeheartedly believe in and endorse abiogenesis despite the complete lack of scientific evidence for it, right?

Late 100's, not early.,

No, early 100's. Actually decades before then, I was being extremely conservative, and yet you STILL want to exaggerate the facts to support your agenda!

Nero set fire to Rome in AD 68, and blamed the Christians for it. He had also been publicly mass execting Christians in Rome between AD 64 and AD 68.

I'm not saying he lied, but he hardly scrupulously checked every detail.

From Wikipedia:

Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1][2] He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics...

That's it. We're done. You have lost all credibility with me.

I've invested a lot of time in this dialogue, and it has been profitable for me because I've learned some things I didn't previously know, but now its getting to the point where its just a huge waste of time.

You could try making up your own mind about how reliable this evidence is. Evidence can be first-hand, second-hand, eye-witness, sourced, unsourced, quoted - these are facts about the reliability of evidence which are unchanged by who says what about them.

I am not pretending a vast knowledge about the ancient world. I am not pretending to know better than the experts. If they give a date to a piece of literature, then who am I to gainsay them? But unsourced, religiously-motivated passages written centuries after the fact they are being used to support do not make for strong evidence. It does not take a PhD in history to see that.

But let me guess, I SHOULD wholeheartedly believe in and endorse abiogenesis despite the complete lack of scientific evidence for it, right?

A very interesting comparison. Abiogenesis is a fascinating and fertile area of study, and generates plenty in the way of evidence. Biology is, of course, a deeply complex field. I would say we had just as much reason to blindly trust the word of experts on this as we would with ancient historians on the subject of Jesus.

But of course, I very much doubt you will. I think you will simply side with whoever is willing to push your religious agenda and pretend it is scientifically tenable...

No, early 100's. Actually decades before then, I was being extremely conservative, and yet you STILL want to exaggerate the facts to support your agenda!

That was a mistake - I was thinking of the late first century! It was the fire in Rome I specifically had in mind. No need to lose your rag.

Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians.[1][2] He lived in what has been called the Silver Age of Latin literature, and as well as the brevity and compactness of his Latin prose, he is known for his penetrating insights into the psychology of power politics...

And where have I said anything which gainsays this?

I don't doubt for a moment he was a great and important historian. But he wasn't magic. He didn't have a time machine. He was writing almost a century after Jesus lived. That is a fact he could not have changed no matter how good he was. He needed a source. And I simply questioned what that source was. We have no evidence that a Roman one was even available to him, so the most likely source is a surely contemporary Christian one!

That's it. We're done. You have lost all credibility with me.

Yes, you do rather sound at the end of your temper. Probably best you stop before you say something rude.

The difference in credibility between you and Ritchie is ENORMOUS, and it's NOT in your favor.

Your ridiculous assertions have shown that you have ZERO credibility, and you act like a childish, incorrigible, authoritarian brat just because you and your referenced 'authorities/scholars' are shown to be full of it. Isn't it about time for you to grow up?

I wrote to Richard Carrier asking him to elaborate on exactly what evidence satisfied him, and indeed apparently most historians, on the topic of Jesus' existence. Was it true Jesus' existence was pretty much a foregone conclusion among scholars, theist and sceptic alike?

He responded thus:

Read my book Proving History which will be out this April. It answers your question. Though not in the way that will make the Ehrman's of the world happy.

With all due offense, your personal opinions don't count as evidence. I realize that you have an extreme theistic bias and anything you see or hear is going to immediately be processed in a way that will reconfirm your insane theistic worldview.

That was a mistake - I was thinking of the late first century! It was the fire in Rome I specifically had in mind.

Ok - thank you for clarifying this. Perhaps my recent assessment of you as a rabid ideologue who blatantly makes facts up and stretches the truth was incorrect.

So you admit that Christianity had spread all the way to Rome by the AD 60s despite massive government efforts to stamp it out, including public executions?

You do realize that is less than 30 years after the crucifixion? This fact lends much credence to both the existence and the resurrection.

We have no evidence that a Roman one was even available to him, so the most likely source is a surely contemporary Christian one!

From Wikipedia:

Although a few scholars question the passage given that Tacitus was born 25 years after Jesus, the majority of scholars consider it genuine....

William L. Portier has stated that the consistency in the references by Tacitus, Josephus and the letters to Emperor Trajan by Pliny the Younger reaffirm the validity of all three accounts....

Tacitus was about 7 years old at the time of the Great Fire of Rome, and as other Romans as he grew up he would have most likely heard about the fire that destroyed most of the city, and Nero's accusations against Christians....Scholars such as Bruce Chilton, Craig Evans, Paul R. Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd agree with John Meier's statement that: "Despite some feeble attempts to show that this text is a Christian interpolation in Tacitus, the passage is obviously genuine....

Scholars generally consider Tacitus' reference not only to be genuine, and of historical value an independent Roman source about early Christianity which is in unison with other historical records....

Robert E. Van Voorst states that "of all Roman writers, Tacitus gives us the most precise information about Christ".[26] John Dominic Crossan considers the passage important in establishing that Jesus existed and was crucified, and states: "That he was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."

Some scholars have debated the historical value of the passage, given that Tacitus does not reveal the source of his information. Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz argue that Tacitus at times had drawn on earlier historical works now lost to us, and he may have used official sources from a Roman archive in this case; however, if Tacitus had been copying from an official source, some scholars would expect him to have labeled Pilate correctly as a prefect rather than a procurator. Theissen and Merz state that Tacitus gives us a description of widespread prejudices about Christianity and a few precise details about "Christus" and Christianity, the source of which remains unclear. However, Paul R. Eddy has stated that given his position as a senator Tacitus was also likely to have had access to official Roman documents of the time and did not need other sources.

Scholars have also debated the issue of hearsay in the reference by Tacitus. Charles Guignebert argued that "So long as there is that possibility [that Tacitus is merely echoing what Christians themselves were saying], the passage remains quite worthless".[44] R. T. France states that the Tacitus passage is at best just Tacitus repeating what he had heard through Christians.[45] However, Paul R. Eddy has stated that as Rome's preeminent historian, Tacitus was generally known for checking his sources and was not in the habit of reporting gossip.[19] Biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman wrote: "Tacitus's report confirms what we know from other sources, that Jesus was executed by order of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, sometime during Tiberius's reign."

I wrote to Richard Carrier asking him to elaborate on exactly what evidence satisfied him, and indeed apparently most historians, on the topic of Jesus' existence. Was it true Jesus' existence was pretty much a foregone conclusion among scholars, theist and sceptic alike?

He responded thus:

Props to you for contacting these scholars! You are officially back on my "cool" list.

Carrier's reply to you made me look into this further and I think I've found a definitive source for his official position on the historicity of Christ.

He engaged in a debate with William Lane Craig in 2009 (a debate that he admits that he lost, btw - http://www.myspace.com/fanofdrcraig/blog/478098935 ) on the resurrection which you can view here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akd6qzFYzX8

At the 46:30 mark he gives his position on the historicity of Jesus. He says he finds the hypothesis that Jesus was a mythical figure persuasive but agrees that the consensus position among historians is that Jesus lived and was crucified, and thus he always debates from the consensus position that Jesus was a real person).

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that he sort of dangles out the possibility that Jesus didn't really exist in order to appeal to the rabid atheist fringe and get them to buy his books, in much the same way that Intelligent Design advocates try to appear to sympathetic to young earth creationists. The fact that he never defends such an assertion in debates with other scholars when it comes to brass tax should tell you something.

At any rate, I do wish to make one thing very clear. I'm NOT a fan of either him or Ehrman. I was using them as examples of ideological atheists agreeing with the historicity of Jesus (Carrier tepidly, Ehrman brazenly).

Please let me us know if you hear from Ehrman or anything more from Carrier.

So you admit that Christianity had spread all the way to Rome by the AD 60s despite massive government efforts to stamp it out, including public executions?

I don't know how much oppression they faced (initially), but yes I am happy that Christianity had spread to Rome by this time. Paul's epistle to the Romans suggests there was some Christian presence in Rome in 57 AD at the latest.

You do realize that is less than 30 years after the crucifixion? This fact lends much credence to both the existence and the resurrection.

I don't make that connection. I don't see why religious tales would spread faster if they happened to be true than if they were false.

Consider Muslim apologists make this exact same argument in defence of Islam. That spread with remarkable speed too. Within 50 years Islam had a solid foothold in 3 continents.

Or Scientology. That's only 60 years old. Okay we do live in the age of information, but we also live in a far more sceptical age where superstition is far less well regarded in the public sphere.

Scholars such as Bruce Chilton, Craig Evans, Paul R. Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd agree with John Meier's statement that: "Despite some feeble attempts to show that this text is a Christian interpolation in Tacitus, the passage is obviously genuine

I see little reason to challenge this conclusion either. The most relevant paragraphs you quoted are the last two,

However, Paul R. Eddy has stated that given his position as a senator Tacitus was also likely to have had access to official Roman documents of the time and did not need other sources.

I do agree a good historian would have preferred official Roman documents. The problem is whether they ever existed the first place. The Romans did make note of exceptionally large-scale executions or those of particularly (in)famous people. Lawyers' speeches were sometimes published (usually for admiration and critique of form, rather than content). But no sign of an organised, meticulous record system for every trial or execution in every province.

Charles Guignebert argued that "So long as there is that possibility [that Tacitus is merely echoing what Christians themselves were saying], the passage remains quite worthless".[44] R. T. France states that the Tacitus passage is at best just Tacitus repeating what he had heard through Christians.[45] However, Paul R. Eddy has stated that as Rome's preeminent historian, Tacitus was generally known for checking his sources and was not in the habit of reporting gossip.

I am inclined to side with Guignebert and France. As long as the hypothesis that Tacitus is using a Christian source remains likely (arguably the most likely one), this passage remains weak evidence for an historical Jesus.

Eddy seems to be relying entirely on Tacitus being inerrant. He was a great historian, certainly, but consider this - even if Tacitus wanted to check the Christian account of Jesus - how exactly could he? What was he to do? This was 80 years after the event. The Christians themselves would have told him they worshipped a man Pilate had executed - indeed I imagine this would have been public knowledge about them. How could he have verified this? And why would he even doubt it?

Interesting. I'll give the whole thing a watch when I have the time. I must say I do find Craig a gifted speaker. That's not to say I don't find his arguments flawed - I certainly do. But he does put them across well.

I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess that he sort of dangles out the possibility that Jesus didn't really exist in order to appeal to the rabid atheist fringe and get them to buy his books, in much the same way that Intelligent Design advocates try to appear to sympathetic to young earth creationists.

Perhaps. I guess we'll know for sure in April.

For the record, I'm aware I've given the impression here that I think Jesus definitely did not exist. Which isn't quite the case. It's more that I don't find the evidence that he DID exist very compelling. I am not committed to a belief in his non-existence, I am just unimpressed by the arguments supporting his existence.

I think the most compelling case to be made for a real Jesus may in fact be found in his mythology. Christopher Hitchens, of all people, actually puts this argument forward very eloquently:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMo5R5pLPBE&feature=endscreen&NR=1

The bare bones is: the stories about Jesus are clumsily cobbled together. For example, the prochecy required the Messiah to be born in Bethlehem. So if the Jesus story was a complete fabrication, why not just have him born in Bethlehem? Hitchens' answer is that there was a real Jesus, who was known to be from Nazareth. The nativity is therefore an attempt to make the known facts about him fit the prophecies (and a clumsy one since is contradicted by historical facts).

This argument does at least make sense to me. However, it is, after all, based on interpretation of legend, so as evidence it will never be very solid.

I don't see why religious tales would spread faster if they happened to be true than if they were false.

Nevertheless, it's completely counter-intuitive that people who would absolutely know if Jesus really existed or not (like the original apostles) and had nothing whatsoever to gain would allow themselves to be tortured and executed for a myth.

Consider Muslim apologists make this exact same argument in defence of Islam. That spread with remarkable speed too. Within 50 years Islam had a solid foothold in 3 continents.

What does this have to do with anything? I've never insinuated that Muhammed was a mythical character. I believe that he was a real historical person. So if anything this bizarre argument you made proves my point.

Or Scientology. That's only 60 years old.

Is scientology claiming that some mythical person existed that didn't really exist? (I'm not very familiar with scientology). What exactly does this argument have to do with the historicity of Jesus?

As long as the hypothesis that Tacitus is using a Christian source remains likely (arguably the most likely one), this passage remains weak evidence for an historical Jesus.

What you can't seem to understand is that the entire argument for the existence of Jesus doesn't rest entirely on Tacitus. Everything that Tacitus writes completely corroborates what other multiple independent historical sources tell us.

Historians typically accept something as valid if it has two independent sources corroborating the person or the event. And in the case of the historical Jesus, we have many more sources than that!

I am just unimpressed by the arguments supporting his existence.

OK. The vast mainstream of historical scholarship accepts that Jesus was a real person who lived and was crucified. If don't think that means anything than more power to you.

You haven't really presented me with a plausible hypothesis that would explain the historical evidence and rise of Christianity but by all means feel free to believe whatever fanciful notions you wish.

Nevertheless, it's completely counter-intuitive that people who would absolutely know if Jesus really existed or not (like the original apostles) and had nothing whatsoever to gain would allow themselves to be tortured and executed for a myth.

But how do we know what happened to the apostles? We only have a few references in Acts of what happened to a couple of them. Then the occasional mention by a Christian scribe or apocryphal source centuries later (which are mostly uncorroborated and contradictory) and tradition stemming even as recently as the medieval era fills in the rest.

If the solid evidence for Jesus is rare and weak, then it is even worse for the apostles. Which is in itself odd, considering they were given powers to heal the sick and cast out demons as they preached. Shouldn't a veritable paper trail have followed them? Yet even the gospels themselves say nothing other than a name for almost half of them - indeed they can't even always agree on the names!

If Jesus was indeed an entirely fictional figure, then it is hardly much more of a stretch that his disciples were fictional too. But in any case, the bottom line is that if you want to use the martyrdom of the apostles as evidence, then you need to give good, solid evidence for their deaths. Which, again, is almost entirely absent.

What does this have to do with anything? I've never insinuated that Muhammed was a mythical character.

I was just making the point that the speed with which a story spreads hardly attests to its veracity (re. the 'Christianity spread quickly' argument').

What exactly does this argument have to do with the historicity of Jesus?

A similar point really. How ridiculous does Scientology sound? How much evidence can we provide that it is an entirely invented fabrication? And yet how many people are willing to believe it anyway? Again, popularity is no indicator of veracity (re. the Christianity spread quickly' argument).

What you can't seem to understand is that the entire argument for the existence of Jesus doesn't rest entirely on Tacitus. Everything that Tacitus writes completely corroborates what other multiple independent historical sources tell us.

But these 'other sources' are even less reliable than he is. You said yourself that you thought Tacitus' was the most trustworthy evidence. And I agree. But it still isn't very trustworthy. How can you claim Tacitus' passage is reliable on the basis that it is backed up by even less reliable sources?

OK. The vast mainstream of historical scholarship accepts that Jesus was a real person who lived and was crucified.

Okay, let's not get carried away. The vast mainstream of historical scholarship does not accept the divine, miracle-performing version of Jesus presented by the Bible. THAT interpretation IS far more hotly contested.

And the position of Jesus as a normal man about whom myths grew is largely backed by the conspicuous lack of (or merely contradictory) historical evidence for the divine, miracle-performing Jesus. The thing is, stories of the divine miracle-worker are all we have. Strip this away and there's virtually nothing left.

You haven't really presented me with a plausible hypothesis that would explain the historical evidence and rise of Christianity but by all means feel free to believe whatever fanciful notions you wish.

I could do so: Jesus was a mythical figure dreamed up by a quasi-Jewish cult. At some point an official solidifying church developed which declared a literal interpretation of Christ official dogma, drawing up documents and rewriting history in light of this new interpretation.

I know you could accuse this hypothesis as being as unevidenced as the Jesus-really-was-Christ one. But the advantage I have is plausibility. Mine is an entirely naturalistic hypothesis, requiring no magic, miracles, gods, demons, spells or visions. It is therefore rationally to be preferred.

Also, I have received a reply from Bart Erhman. Hilariously it says:

Thanks for your email. I have a book coming out in March that deals at length with the question. It will be called Did Jesus Exist? And it will be published by HarperOne. Hope it gives you all the evidence you're looking for!

But in any case, the bottom line is that if you want to use the martyrdom of the apostles as evidence, then you need to give good, solid evidence for their deaths.

We have evidence from the book of Acts and the epistles. There's one thing you have to understand. You don't get to dismiss evidence just because it comes from a Christian source. I've noticed you do this pretty much all the time.

It's your main line of defense. You pulled the same stunt earlier today when I referenced the paper that criticized Darwinism. "Oh but this comes from a Christian university", you said, as though that settled the matter. You can't just dismiss evidence without considering the arguments (at least not unless you want to be a close minded fool).

We also have corroborating historical evidence that confirms the New Testament accounts, like this.

I was just making the point that the speed with which a story spreads hardly attests to its veracity

Except that your argument would make no sense unless you were trying to suggest that the Muslims were conquering their neighbors and spreading Islam around the world because someone invented an imaginary Mohammed. Do you think Mohammed was a fictitious person too?

How ridiculous does Scientology sound? How much evidence can we provide that it is an entirely invented fabrication?

You have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know much about scientology.

Do the scientologists claim that some imaginary person existed 60 years ago that we know for a fact did not actually exist? Also, are the original scientologists dying and getting martyred for their beliefs? How exactly does this correlate with the historicity of Christ?

But these 'other sources' are even less reliable than he is. You said yourself that you thought Tacitus' was the most trustworthy evidence. And I agree.

No I never said that. I said that Tacitus was my favorite piece of (extra-biblical) evidence because it corroborates the New Testament and verifies the attitude of the Roman Empire towards the Christians, an attitude that we see reflected in the world to this day.

The vast mainstream of historical scholarship does not accept the divine, miracle-performing version of Jesus presented by the Bible.

Maybe, maybe not. It's irrelevant. I'm not here arguing that Jesus was the Messiah or that Christianity is true. I've just been arguing for the historicity of Jesus. If you don't even accept that, there is no point in discussing anything else.

Besides, the fact that you refuse to accept the historical consensus really highlights to any readers of this blog just how much on radical fringe you are and what a prejudice you (and the other atheists) have against Christianity. It really undermines your case for atheism and your entire credibility. Fair minded people can see this and easily ascertain what is going on.

I could do so: Jesus was a mythical figure dreamed up by a quasi-Jewish cult.

Which would explain none of the historical facts nor the rise of Christianity. In other words, its an awful hypothesis that just shows that you are a person with ideological blinders.

Also, I have received a reply from Bart Erhman. Hilariously it says:

Thanks for your email. I have a book coming out in March that deals at length with the question. It will be called Did Jesus Exist? And it will be published by HarperOne. Hope it gives you all the evidence you're looking for!

I kid you not.

I find your reaction to his email quite interesting. Richard Carrier basically sent you the same email and you found that intriguing, maybe even a little exciting, but you seem to be highly annoyed at Ehrman for saying pretty much the same thing.

We have evidence from the book of Acts and the epistles. There's one thing you have to understand. You don't get to dismiss evidence just because it comes from a Christian source. I've noticed you do this pretty much all the time.

Simple minded Creationist still doesn't understand that "the Bible is true because the Bible says it is true" isn't evidence.

We also have corroborating historical evidence that confirms the New Testament accounts, like this.

Simple minded Creationist still doesn't understand that having some parts of a book be true doesn't make everything in a book be true.

You have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know much about scientology.

Simple minded Creationist doesn't know much about any real sciences either but that doesn't stop him from blithering about them.

Besides, the fact that you refuse to accept the historical consensus really highlights to any readers of this blog just how much on radical fringe you are and what a prejudice you (and the other atheists) have against Christianity. It really undermines your case for atheism and your entire credibility. Fair minded people can see this and easily ascertain what is going on.

It was only a matter of time before simple minded Creationist would once again start whining about being the poor persecuted Christian martyr :( being criticized solely for his religion and not for his dumb claims and obnoxious behavior.

As someone already noted, the lack of self-awareness this goober exhibits is staggering.

Acts of the Apostles meantions the deaths of only two disciples - Judas Iscariot who did not, by anyone's version of events, die a Christian martyr, and James, son of Zebedee, who was merely killed by Herod. It does not say he could have saved himself by recanting. It's just as logical that Herod did not give him that choice and just had him executed.

Peter's and Andrew's deaths are noted respectively in the Acts of Peter and Acts of Andrew, which are late second century books, while Philip's death, recorded in the Acts of Philip, written probably in the fourth century, is so fantastical even The New Advent Catholic encyclopedia calls it "purely legendary and a tissue of fables".

You don't get to dismiss evidence just because it comes from a Christian source.

Well, yes and no. On one hand, coming from a Christian source doesn't immediately make a reference false. On the other, it does vastly undermine it's credibility.

The problem is that in the first few centuries AD a lot of Christian scholars were writing a lot of fantastical things, making a lot of miraculous claims, for purely religious reasons. It is precisely these miraculous claims we want to verify. And to do that, we have to check them against, as far as we can find, impartial, historically reliable sources. To just check them against OTHER miracle-laden, religiously-motivated, Christian sources is an exercise in circular logic.

You pulled the same stunt earlier today when I referenced the paper that criticized Darwinism. "Oh but this comes from a Christian university", you said, as though that settled the matter.

Again, it's true that that does not automatically make it false. That only comes from a detailed and thorough investigation of the paper. However it does fatally undermine the claim that this is an authentic, scientific paper which has gone through the rigours of peer review. These are not real scientists - they are preachers in lab coats trying to invent ways of making their faith sound scientifically plausible.

And let me be clear: my beef is purely with the ID movement here. There are plently of perfectly professional, respectable, credible scientists who are also Christians. It is the ID movement specifically which is a cynical ploy to get religion into the science classroom. No real scientist would have taken Behe, Wells and Meyer as credible sources. They have proven on many occassions they are nothing of the sort.

We also have corroborating historical evidence that confirms the New Testament accounts, like this.

But this is contradicted by other sources which say that he was martyred by crucifixion in Egypt, not stoned by the Jews.

http://latter-rain.com/ltrain/jamesle.htm

Except that your argument would make no sense unless you were trying to suggest that the Muslims were conquering their neighbors and spreading Islam around the world because someone invented an imaginary Mohammed. Do you think Mohammed was a fictitious person too?

No, I am happy that Mohammed really lived. However I don't believe all the fantastical stories about him. I do not believe, in short, the version of Mohammed they spread was true. That didn't stop it spreading, and very quickly.

You have me at a disadvantage here. I don't know much about scientology.

Then you are fortunate. The link with Christianity here is, I admit, more abstract. Scientology doctrine mandates that 75 million years ago an intergalactic warlord lured billions of aliens to Earth and killed them with hydrogen bombs inside volcanoes. Their dead souls were then captured, brainwashed, and placed inside the bodies of then-primative humans, causing all manner of ills. But fear not, scientology can exorcise those demons - for a price.

What we can learn here is a lesson in the psychology of religion and cult thinking. How do you get otherwise intelligent people to swallow such inane and demonstrably false garbage?

Part of it is probably due to its cult mentality of conspiracy theorising - 'this is the truth everyone is trying to keep from you. I am giving you special, secret knowledge'. And part of it is probably down to the system of initiation - new converts are only told a little, and incouraged to invest money and dedication to progress further within Scientology's ranks. It is only when you get to the inner circles that you are told the full extent of the barmy truth, by which time you have probably invested too much time, money and self-identity to just walk away. As an outsider, I of course shouldn't know anything about their beliefs. But then this is the age of the internet, after all.

My point being that if you are spreading a cult, particularly a new one, rational analysis of the claims rarely come into play. The spread (and rapid spread at that) of Christianity should not be considered solid evidence of the veracity of its claims. The converts were likely to be as vulnerable (if not more so) to cult thinking as they are today.

I said that Tacitus was my favorite piece of (extra-biblical) evidence because it corroborates the New Testament and verifies the attitude of the Roman Empire towards the Christians, an attitude that we see reflected in the world to this day.

DO you think there is a more reliable source which verifies the existence of a real Jesus then? What DO you think is the strongest piece of evidence?

the fact that you refuse to accept the historical consensus really highlights to any readers of this blog just how much on radical fringe you are and what a prejudice you (and the other atheists) have against Christianity.

Again, I am not committed to the position of Jesus' non-existence. I am sceptical of it merely because, as I see it, there very little in the way of evidence FOR it, and most of that is thoroughly unreliable.

It really undermines your case for atheism...

Pardon?

Which would explain none of the historical facts nor the rise of Christianity.

On the contrary. The hypothesis that Christianity started merely as a quasi-Jewish cult is perfectly compatible with all the evidence. What evidence contradicts it?

Surely not Christianity's 'rise'? Christianity was just another small, mostly insignificant cult until it caught the eye of Emporer Constantine in the 4th century, which catapulted it into Empire-wide respectability. That was just a fluke of history.

I find your reaction to his email quite interesting. Richard Carrier basically sent you the same email and you found that intriguing, maybe even a little exciting, but you seem to be highly annoyed at Ehrman for saying pretty much the same thing.

Not because it's Ehrman rather than Carrier. More because I sent two emails and neither gave me a direct response.

Still, a couple of months is not a long wait in the grand scheme of things.

It does not say he could have saved himself by recanting. It's just as logical that Herod did not give him that choice and just had him executed.

Which is completely ad hoc and also irrelevant. He was arrested for practicing Christianity and would have been aware of the dangers of doing so. To say that he willingly put his life at risk for an imaginary person really exceeds the bounds of reason.

Peter's and Andrew's deaths are noted respectively in the Acts of Peter and Acts of Andrew, which are late second century books,

Ritchie, you're arguments are REALLY awful! It took me 3 seconds to find this on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Peter

The mention in the New Testament of the death of Peter says that Jesus indicated its form by saying: "You will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."[35] Early church tradition (as indicated below) says Peter probably died by crucifixion (with arms outstretched) at the time of the Great Fire of Rome of the year 64. Margherita Guarducci, who led the research leading to the rediscovery of Peter’s tomb in its last stages (1963–1968), concludes Peter died on 13 October AD 64 during the festivities on the occasion of the “dies imperii” of Emperor Nero. This took place three months after the disastrous fire that destroyed Rome for which the emperor wished to blame the Christians. This “dies imperii” (regnal day anniversary) was an important one, exactly ten years after Nero ascended to the throne, and it was ‘as usual’ accompanied by much bloodshed. Traditionally, Roman authorities sentenced him to death by crucifixion. According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter, he was crucified head down. Tradition also locates his burial place where the Basilica of Saint Peter was later built, directly beneath the Basilica's high altar.Clement of Rome, in his Letter to the Corinthians (Chapter 5), written c. 80–98, speaks of Peter's martyrdom in the following terms: "Let us take the noble examples of our own generation. Through jealousy and envy the greatest and most just pillars of the Church were persecuted, and came even unto death… Peter, through unjust envy, endured not one or two but many labours, and at last, having delivered his testimony, departed unto the place of glory due to him."The apocryphal Acts of Peter is also thought to be the source for the tradition about the famous phrase "Quo vadis, Domine?" (or "Pou Hupageis, Kurie?" which means, "Whither goest Thou, Master?"). According to the story, Peter, fleeing Rome to avoid execution, asked the question of a vision of Jesus, to which Jesus allegedly responded that he was "going to Rome to be crucified again." On hearing this, Peter decided to return to the city to accept martyrdom. This story is commemorated in an Annibale Carracci painting. The Church of Quo Vadis, near the Catacombs of Saint Callistus, contains a stone in which Jesus' footprints from this event are supposedly preserved, though this was apparently an ex-voto from a pilgrim, and indeed a copy of the original, housed in the Basilica of St Sebastian.The ancient historian Josephus describes how Roman soldiers would amuse themselves by crucifying criminals in different positions, and it is likely that this would have been known to the author of the Acts of Peter. The position attributed to Peter's crucifixion is thus plausible, either as having happened historically or as being an invention by the author of the Acts of Peter. Death, after crucifixion head down, is unlikely to be caused by suffocation, the usual cause of death in ordinary crucifixion[citation needed].A medieval tradition[citation needed] was that the Mamertine Prison in Rome is the place where Peter was imprisoned before his execution.

But this is contradicted by other sources which say that he was martyred by crucifixion in Egypt, not stoned by the Jews.

All you've done is provide additional evidence. There were three different James. The two original apostles (James the Greater and James the Lesser) and James the brother of the Lord who converted to Chrsitianity after the crucifixion event. We have evidence from three sources (your source, the book of Acts, and the historical records of Josephus) corroborating that they were all martyred.

James the GREATER died at the hands of Herod. James the LESSOR died in Egypt. James the JUST (the brother of Jesus) was brought before the Sanhedrin and stoned. Three different men, three different martyrdoms.

All of this completely contradicts your "imaginary apostles" narrative and demonstrates that real historical people were putting their lives at risk and being executed. Again, it requires someone to check their sanity at the door to believe that they were doing this because of an imaginary person.

See:

http://mb-soft.com/believe/txh/jamess.htm

It really undermines your case for atheism...

Pardon?

Of course. In much the same way that an atheist debating a young earth creationist can demonstrate the ample scientific evidence for an ancient universe and earth and undermine the credibility of the young earth creationist. This really makes it unnececessary for the atheist to defend atheism. But in this situation you would be the young earth creationist, steadfastly refusing to believe the overwhelming consensus of scholarship because of your religious beliefs.

No, I am happy that Mohammed really lived.

Interesting. And what is your evidence for that?

What DO you think is the strongest piece of evidence?

I think they are all strong. But from the perspective of historical ancient writings its probably the epistles of Paul. As Ehrman said in the interview, he doesn't know of one single scholar (amongst thousands) who disputes that Paul wrote Galatians and visited with James the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem.

Christianity was just another small, mostly insignificant cult until it caught the eye of Emporer Constantine in the 4th century

You've GOT to be kidding me! Please tell me this is just an off the cuff remark!

Which is completely ad hoc and also irrelevant. He was arrested for practicing Christianity and would have been aware of the dangers of doing so. To say that he willingly put his life at risk for an imaginary person really exceeds the bounds of reason.

We do not know why he was (allegedly) arrested. Acts does imply it was a deliberate act by Herod to 'vex the church', but that is our only source and it is far from a reliable one.

Moreover, you are still assuming that a non-real Jesus means the very first preachers of Christianity (whoever they were) were deliberately preaching lies. This is not necessarily the case. It is perfectly plausible they were preaching a version of Jesus they knew to be entriely allegorical.

Ritchie, you're arguments are REALLY awful! It took me 3 seconds to find this on wikipedia:

I don't know why you think any of that contradicts what I've said. Several points of Peter's death are sourced as 'Tradition says...' which basically means it is a belief with no evidence. The only actual sources it cites are, as I said, the apocryphal Acts of Peter, and a letter from Clement of Rome, which does not say anything about HOW Peter died. Josephus provides evidence that Romans experimented with different methods of crucifying people, so the death given in Acts of Peter is at least plausible. But still, he does not corroborate that Peter himself died in this way.

All you've done is provide additional evidence. There were three different James. The two original apostles (James the Greater and James the Lesser) and James the brother of the Lord who converted to Chrsitianity after the crucifixion event.

The main problem here is identifying the Jameses. Your opinion - that there were three - is advocated by Protestant and East Orthodox churches. However, Catholics hold that James, brother of Jesus is in fact James, Son of Alphaeus (or, James the Lesser). This is outlined in the very link you gave me. Indeed there is also another line of thought that runs that James the Lesser was in fact a fourth James, though I don't believe this is a widely accepted notion.

Of course. In much the same way that an atheist debating a young earth creationist can demonstrate the ample scientific evidence for an ancient universe and earth and undermine the credibility of the young earth creationist. This really makes it unnececessary for the atheist to defend atheism. But in this situation you would be the young earth creationist, steadfastly refusing to believe the overwhelming consensus of scholarship because of your religious beliefs.

For one thing, I don't hold religious beliefs. That's kinda the point of being an atheist. For another, the position that 'Jesus did not exist' is hardly one defined by my (lack of) religious beliefs, since the proposition that Jesus was a real and entirely human man about whom stories just got grossly exaggerated, is just as compatible. Finally, the analogy falls apart when we consider how we would show a YEC that they are wrong - we would show them good, solid, reliable, trustworthy evidence. Facts which contradict their beliefs. This is, it seems to me, exactly what is lacking here. A mere appeal to authority is hollow without the evidence which satisfied the experts.

Well I will admit ignorance may play a big role. I am just not nearly as familiar with the evidence for and against the existence of a real Mohammed as I am with that of Jesus. So I am happier to bend to scholarly consensus which is, as I understand it, that we can be fairly certain he was real. Being an atheist, I don't belive the miraculous claims made about him, so whether he existed as a person or not matters little to me.

Of course the same would, in principle, apply to Jesus except for the trivial fact that I am familiar with the evidence for and against Jesus. I used to be a Christian and I started examining the evidence thinking it would reinforce my faith. As it turned out, I found a distressing lack of evidence, which had the opposite effect. Added to which, I grew up in a Christian-dominated society, and most debates I have about religion are with Christians. If I was an ex-Muslim living in an Islamic-dominated society, I suppose I would be far more familiar with the evidence for Mohammed. Whether I would find it compelling or not I can't say with much certainty.

You've GOT to be kidding me! Please tell me this is just an off the cuff remark!

Ummm, no. Why, what do you think marks the 'rise' of early Christianity out as being different to other religions (apart from, presumably, assuming it happens to be true)? What is it about this rise which contradicts the hypothesis that Christianity began as a Jewish mystery cult?

It is perfectly plausible they were preaching a version of Jesus they knew to be entriely allegorical.

It is not plausible, not unless you want to completely toss out every single thing written about Jesus in the gospels, the book of Acts, the epistles, the writings of the early church fathers, and all the extra-biblical references to Jesus.

There is absolutely nothing written in any of these accounts that would lead anyone to believe that Jesus was a figurative or an imaginary person. Your attempts at trying to read secret meanings into some of the scriptures were an absolutely horrible exegesis that reeked with desperation.

The only actual sources it cites are, as I said, the apocryphal Acts of Peter, and a letter from Clement of Rome, which does not say anything about HOW Peter died.

You originally tried to imply that we didn't even know if Peter was martyred and the only evidence we had was from the late 2nd century.

Now you're apparently trying to pretend that you never took this stance and are trying to argue that just Peter died of a heart attack, I guess, even though Clement of Rome CLEARLY says that both Peter and Paul were martyred:

Through envy and jealousy, the greatest and most righteous pillars [of the Church] have been persecuted and put to death. Let us set before our eyes the illustrious apostles. Peter, through unrighteous envy, endured not one or two, but numerous labours, and when he had finally suffered martyrdom, departed to the place of glory due to him. Owing to envy, Paul also obtained the reward of patient endurance, after being seven times thrown into captivity, compelled to flee, and stoned. After preaching both in the east and west, he gained the illustrious reputation due to his faith, having taught righteousness to the whole world, and come to the extreme limit of the west, and suffered martyrdom under the prefects. Thus was he removed from the world, and went into the holy place, having proved himself a striking example of patience.

However, Catholics hold that James, brother of Jesus is in fact James, Son of Alphaeus (or, James the Lesser).

Which has nothing to do with nothing. Catholics hold this position because they believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, and thus can't allow for Jesus to have any siblings. The evidence from history and the gospels clearly shows that this is a false doctrine.

But that's neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that we have plenty of historical evidence that the apostles were out getting martyred for their beliefs, to which someone would have to be absolutely insane to think they were going through all this trouble and suffering for an imaginary person.

There is a reason why the vast majority of historians believe that Jesus was a real person.

That's kinda the point of being an atheist.

And that's kinda the point of denying the historical existence of Jesus. If you can do that, then you don't have to seriously deal with any of the arguments from Christianity. It's a great way to insulate yourself from having your worldview challenged.

At any rate, I'm tired of discussing this topic with you, and the blog has moved on to other subjects. You have utterly failed to convince me of your case.

But I'd like to thank you for engaging me on this. I've never argued this topic before and as a result of our dialogue I've learned a ton of new information that has reinforced my faith in Christ and will help me when I dialogue with other atheists in the future.

I wish you well and I'm sure I'll see around on this blog in the future. I don't expect that I'll be replying to any more of your messages on this thread. Take care.

"There is absolutely nothing written in any of these accounts that would lead anyone to believe that Jesus was a figurative or an imaginary person. Your attempts at trying to read secret meanings into some of the scriptures were an absolutely horrible exegesis that reeked with desperation."

Actually, there is absolutely nothing written in any of those so-called accounts or any other religious hogwash that would lead anyone sane to believe that jesus was a real person. Your attempts at trying to read credibility into any of the so-called scriptures is an absolutely horrible act of lunacy that reeks with desperation.

goober also slobbered:

"There is a reason why the vast majority of historians believe that Jesus was a real person."

For some reason goober thinks that cherry picking a few alleged "scholars" (LOL) of his biased choosing makes a good, evidential argument. goober clearly doesn't understand what evidence is.